HarmonyOS 2.0 Beta Released, HarmonyOS Devices Coming in 2021

Due to geopolitical tensions, Huawei cannot rely on Google Android operating system over the long term, and in May 2019 we reported HongMeng OS may become Huawei’s OS alternative to Android. HongMeng (鸿蒙) OS will finally be called HarmonyOS outside of China, and we recently reported Huawei was trying to attract more developers with monetary incentives to brings more apps to HMS (Huawei Mobile Services).

We now have a more clear timeline with the company’s recent release of HarmonyOS 2.0 beta that’s currently available for smart home applications, smartwatches, and head-on-displays, and will become available for smartphones in December 2020.

HarmonyOS 2.0 beta

The release includes SDKs with over 13,000 APIs, documentation, tools, and simulator/emulator. OpenArk is an open-source compiler that was released last September, and Huawei DevEco is the IDE for development that works on top of Android Studio.

HarmonyOS 2.0 SDK Source Code

Huawei also introduced OpenHarmony which should be the equivalent of the Android Open Source Project (AOSP).

OpenHarmony Roadmap

OpenHarmony has initial support for devices up to 128MB RAM, and the company will add support for devices up to 4GB RAM by April 2021, and more than 4GB RAM by October 2021.

Whether you intend to develop apps for the new operating system or devices based on HarmonyOS, you’ll find resources to get started on the official website.

That means we should expect Huawei device to start shipping without Android in 2021, and no Google services meaning no Google Play, nor official YouTube, Gmail, YouTube, Google Maps, or Chrome apps. It’s not really an issue within mainland China, but in other countries, it may become more problematic although there are good alternatives, and I doubt Google can practically block Huawei devices from accessing their servers.

Myself, I’m mostly using Google Play and Gmail app, as I usually browse the web with Firefox where I also watch YouTube videos and rely on MAPS.me app whenever I need a navigation system. As a side note, my Xiaomi Mi A2 smartphone recently died (physically damaged storage), so I searched for a locally available smartphone, and I ended up buying Huawei Y9 Prime 2019 last month since it’s popular in Thailand and matches most of my specs & price requirements. The phone shipped with Android 9.0, but I got upgraded to Android 10, and so far everything works well including Google Services. We’ll see how it will go on September 15 as Google has to cut off all ties from Huawei. Will my phone eventually get an update to HarmonyOS? Probably not, since the phone would have been released for about 2 years.

Via Liliputing and Android Authority

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6 Replies to “HarmonyOS 2.0 Beta Released, HarmonyOS Devices Coming in 2021”

    1. Unless it comes from Russia in which case it would seemingly be welcome with open arms based upon the current love affair between the two nations.

    • At each new affair, including spying problems, people goes out of Facebook. Interesting people goes out from Tweeter toward Fediverse via Mastodon, due to censorship. Youtube film-makers started to go toward Fediverse via PeerTube. This will probably allow to have a more central place, and at the same time decentralized of social communication with independency from this fascist state.
    • TikTok, is one of the most popular casual application, work perfectly and don’t spy as some investigation shown, even for NSA, Microsoft made pressure to buy it, and Trump said he will block it, if it don’t give it to Microsoft…
    • When US started oil wars in 2001 with Afghanistan and Iraq, China diversified it’s transportation and energy system, they have now the first 5 world most powerful power plant are dams made by China, 2 locally, and 3 in South America. They developed electric motorbike quickly, and they now have the fastest and largest electric bullet train network, bigger than the rest of the world bullet train network, and can now export their railway and train technologies around the world.
    • When US blocked China from International Space Station, that Russia brought to world (after Mir success), China successfully started its own orbital station.
    • When US blocked export of high level Intel processor for HPC, China, made it’s own processor, beating everyone with domestic processor, and open the way for HPC to use RISC processor instead of x86, now, on Top5 world computer, all are RISC one, including top One Fujitsu using a mix of British ARM technology, and domestic technologies. US themselves use IBM Power instead of Intel now. Europe started to create it’s own HPC SoC including ARM processor and RISC-V accelerators, no more Intel, Nvidia or other US products with lot of spywares for European computing. Germany block more and more Microsoft stuff in it’s own administrations. China also developed lot of embedded RISC-V technologies, and now RISC-V servers technologies
    • When US tried to block Russia to Swift Credit card service; China started to push AliPay and Wechatpay. that is used by everyone in China now, and any tourist place in world accept it.
    • Huawei was becoming the world number one in phone market share, due to the quality of their devices, and don’t help NSA to spy everyone, Trump block them, they now launch their own OS, that will already be quickly a big player due to large domestic market.

    I hope they will continue to block export their products to the rest of the world, this is a very good thing for innovation, and breaking outdated and proprietary standards ^^.

  1. When Biden is President this may become a mute point as the Dems roll back much of the damage that Forrest Chump has done and perhaps invite Huawei back into the tech fold.

  2. Indian government will block this due to tensions on the common Himalayan “border”. One up for Korean, Taiwanese or Japanese hardware without this “Harmony”.
    On the other hand India probably would like its “own” OS too.

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