HongMeng OS is Huawei’s Alternative to Android (Rumor)

If you’ve been following the news, you must know Huawei was hit by trade restrictions from the US government, and US companies announced they’d comply meaning Intel, Google, Qualcomm, Microsoft, Xilinx, and others announced they’d have to mostly stop doing business with Huawei. At first, it seemed like all Google services would stop working on existing Huawei phones, but it’s not that bad, and apparently, it only impacts phones sold after May 16. Everything is still in flow, so it may take a while for things to settle down, and find out what the practical implications will be.

Nevertheless, upon reading the news, I thought it would be a boon for projects like /e/ operating system that works without closed-source binaries from Google, but it turns out that Huawei is working on its own operating system called HongMeng (鸿蒙) OS according to Chinese media reports.

HongMeng OS
Probably NOT HongMeng OS – Source: WccfTech

We don’t have a whole lot of details, but HongMeng OS is supposed to be in the trial phase and may replace Android in future Huawei handsets. Some Chinese sources report the OS has been developed for a while (Google translation):

“A professor led the Huawei operating system team to develop a proprietary operating system – Hongmeng. The operating system has been optimized for Linux (open source), and has been used in Huawei mobile phones (safety part). In addition, the project also won the first prize of the Ministry of Education Technology Invention (2018), the second prize of the National Technology Progress (2012), and strive for csranking as soon as possible before entering V. Prepare to declare the 2020 National Technology Progress Award.”

The final name change since HongMeng OS may just be a  codename. There are also challenges to bringing a new OS to market, and the most difficult task may be to motivate developers to bring their app to the platform. Just ask Samsung (Tizen) and Microsoft (Windows Mobile).

Via NotebookCheck

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37 Comments
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jqpabc123
jqpabc123
4 years ago

If you build it, they won’t necessarily come.

I’m one of the few people left on the planet still using Windows Mobile. A perfectly usable and effective phone OS, faster and more resource efficient than Android. But the apps are just not there.

Paul M
Paul M
4 years ago

The original palmos was much more efficient than Microsoft’s offerings.

Trekkie
Trekkie
4 years ago

Man, I still use mine Palm Centro as main phone. I’m still one of few people left using Palm OS.

Mike
Mike
4 years ago

“If you build it, they won’t necessarily come.” Don’t forget that China does play/work with “normal” western market dynamics. The Chinese government doesn’t have to ban Android/iOS, they can just make their use count against your “social score”. Similarly, application developers wouldn’t be banned from making Android/iOS versions of their apps, they’d just find that the government approval required for many apps (notably games) would take longer … say 10-20 years. Given that the OS has won awards from National/Government agencies I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the Chinese government has been keeping it in it’s back pocket for… Read more »

Noloqoq
Noloqoq
3 years ago

The original social score, was in us, mainly for people that can’t pay their house, or say to shops that want to hire somebody, if he theft something in a shop. In China instead (this is not what western newspaper say), this block companies that don’t follow quality standard, and only block people with debt to buy luxury things.

theguyuk
theguyuk
4 years ago

And the failed Firefox OS. I have the ZTE model, now running Android 4. Version .

To much infighting going on, as there are several OS out there.

Neel Gupta
4 years ago

The grandchild(fork of fork) of Firefox OS is Kai OS, and is growing rapidly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KaiOS

Noloqoq
Noloqoq
3 years ago

UBports is a full linux, adapted to mobile, and so has more long term viability, as linux for servers/HPC/box, or the Linux kernel in all thoses phone systems.

Rohit
Rohit
4 years ago

I still think simplicity of old Nokia’s Symbian series were better.I got a phone with kai os. The problem is app support that we are used to on Apple & Android.It takes time to move apps to a new OS and choice to choose according to our taste is strictly limited for something new.

Paul M
Paul M
4 years ago

If only Huawei/honor allowed their bootloaders to be unlocked, people might still buy them and install lineage.

Noloqoq
Noloqoq
3 years ago

People still buy them, in China first, where they don’t care about Google, and in Europe too… due to superior quality of their phones and that they don’t care about Trump.

Gigi
Gigi
4 years ago

The world needs Linux smartphones!

aaaa
aaaa
4 years ago

Android is Linux, just root your phone! Haha

KotCzarny
4 years ago

nope. it uses linux-based kernel, but it’s not linux. have fun running your device with latest vanilla

Noloqoq
Noloqoq
3 years ago

UBports, like in PinePhone ?

Miquel Mayol
4 years ago

Lignux (GNU/Linux) I suppose you wanted to write

Hong Meng Chai
Hong Meng Chai
4 years ago

Bring HongMeng in quickly. The world is waiting for it.
Give it a better name i.e. Communice (short form for Nice Community).

Jon Smirl
4 years ago

Huawei does not need a new OS. The US government can’t cut them off from AOSP, they can only block Google’s services. AOSP has been released under a license that gives free access to everyone. Do note that Amazon Fire is based on AOSP and they have been getting along just fine without Google for a decade. Given the Amazon example, it is certainly possible to cut ties with Google and still use Android. Inside China most phones don’t rely on Google anyway since it is blocked. So this has little impact on Huawei’s sales inside China. The challenge to… Read more »

Kedar K
Kedar K
4 years ago

But other markets wont take this well, take India…a big market for Huawei products. No one will buy a OS/Phone that does not have PlayStore/Google Services support.

eFfeM
eFfeM
4 years ago

Yes. They can easily replace the play store with their own app store. Actually they could even host apps like gmail there (maybe not legal)
I know in the past I also saw apk’s floating around for chinese devices that came without play store.
Thinking of it, it is probably not too difficult to trick the play store into thinking that you are e.g. a Samsung phone.

Toto
Toto
4 years ago

As said Jon Smirl, they already do that for year in China, and that’s a problem for nobody… I personally prefer to avoid those market, I use Fdroid and download sometimes APK from some git repositories, on a Samsung, and everything is just fine. My next phone will probably be a Huawei, there was too much problems in default chinese/japanese input methods after OS updates on Samsung :(.

jyt
jyt
4 years ago

please ,china was stronger only in the bad situation 50years ago.now its time to stronger again.

tkaiser
tkaiser
4 years ago

The US being on trade war can dictate what a British company owned by a Japanese company is doing: ARM cuts ties with Huawei, threatening future chip designs 🙁

zoobab
4 years ago

That’s pretty good news for RISC-V 🙂 !

RK
RK
4 years ago

Congrats to SiFive for getting into bed early with ImgTec. Now If you’ll excuse, time to short ARM…

Laurent
Laurent
4 years ago
  RK

ARM is not a public company anymore.

Noloqoq
Noloqoq
3 years ago

Just one year later, of this post Alibaba make powerful enough RISC-V processors to run devices, European Union, do a mix of ARM processor and RISC-V accelerator (to avoid nvidia) in their first domestic Soc, next step, a full RISC-C SoC ? Probably if nvidia buy ARM

tkaiser
tkaiser
4 years ago

And with whom should China speak? «Le crétin orange» as he’s called in certain EU countries?

blu
blu
4 years ago

It’s escallated already, I’m afraid.

TonyT
TonyT
4 years ago

That’s the peril of being multinational.
Last year, China blocked the purchase of a Dutch company by an American company (Qualcomm trying to buy NXP).

Miquel Mayol
4 years ago

If a Sailfish or Librem phone alike OS that would be Lignux (GNU/Linux) compatible, plus Android compatible, that can be run from IoT to supercomputers will arrive from this, not only Android, and ChormeOS but also MS WOS, MacOS, IOS and Red Hat will suffer a lot, also AWS Azure and Google cloud services and all the e-mail pictures cloud office and desktop office. But if as I read ARM cuts them too, RISC V MIPS and some Vulkan compatible open source – or not – GPU will raise – and remember that RISC is better than CISC and is… Read more »

Greg Schofield
Greg Schofield
4 years ago

The Kirin CPU is amongst the top four performers, Kirin OS already ships though whether this is HongMeng OS can be questioned, but when the chip is taken into account with Huaweis strategy of enhancing new ranges of small cheap phones, its Asian, African and Latin American markets dwarf the western markets. The CPU has eight cores, and two different types of Neural processors, it comes in a high performance and cheap low performance models. HongMeng OS is optimised for parallel processing which can be done on any modern multi-core CPU, it is unclear if it is just the OS… Read more »

Dan
Dan
4 years ago

Developers will rush to get their apps into Hongmeng if you position Hongmeng as a platform to reach China’s 1.3 billion people. And if you offer an early bird incentive of reaching more people, they will trip over one another to get in.

brynnus
brynnus
4 years ago

The stupidity of people never ceases to amaze me. All Huawei phones will continue to operate normally. 1) you won’t be able to update android to latest version … less than 1% of phone owners ever update the OS (apart from mostly unnecessary “security” updates to protect against obscure exploits that will never be directed at you) 2) no playstore…. I’ve never used playstore, its not required. APKpure and F-droid do the exact same job and handle all app updates. (amusingly both are available in playstore) 3) no youtube app…. again not required. All mobile browsers can access youtube and… Read more »

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