• Huawei has officially launched its first OS that doesn’t support Android apps, HarmonyOS Next.
• The system is claimed to improve performance, have a suite of Huawei apps and an improved AI assistant.
• Unfortunately for South African users, HarmonyOS Next will likely never be released outside of China.

Since its public breakup with the US and Google in late 2019, Huawei has been struggling to close the Android-shaped cavern left in the operating system of its mobile devices. Now, more than four years later, the Chinese tech giant has finally, officially launched its home-grown replacement – HarmonyOS Next.

Unlike previous versions of HarmonyOS, HarmonyOS Next no longer supports Android apps, but not all Huawei smartphones or tablets will be seeing the new system, and it will only reach devices with Huawei’s Kirin and Kunpeng processors, at least for now.

Right now the OS is in beta and available for public testing on the HUAWEI Pura 70 series, HUAWEI Pocket 2 series, HUAWEI MatePad Pro 11-inch 2024 model and other models, it says. According to The Register, Huawei currently has no plans to release HarmonyOS Next outside of China, at least for the foreseeable future.

Huawei declared (Chinese) the operating system to be “released” this morning, calling it “the largest upgrade since the birth of HarmonyOS, providing users with native interconnection, native intelligence, native security, and native smooth high-quality experiences.”

The company explains that the new OS is “based on Huawei’s Ark Engine” and achieves a performance upgrade on when using applications on the system. “The smoothness of the entire machine is increased by 30%, the battery life is increased by about 56 minutes, and the running memory is saved by 1.5GB on average,” it claimed.

Replacing Android apps from Google will be Huawei’s own versions, including Huawei Video, Huawei Music, and Huawei Reading. Third-party apps are also available, like TikTok, Alipay and other local Chinese offerings. These will likely be adjusted regionally if (and that’s a big if) the rollout of the OS happens anywhere else.

Another big upgrade to the Huawei OS is what the company calls “Harmony Intelligence” perhaps taking a page from Apple’s branding book. This is an AI assistant Huawei is calling XiaoYi. It runs on the company Pangu LLM.

“The newly upgraded XiaoYi is more professional, more convenient and more considerate: it has a permanent navigation bar, supports circle selection, drag and drop and other interactive methods, can read the screen for dialogue, can help with notes and writing, and can respond to various tasks at any time,” Huawei adds.

Despite there being no plans to bring the new system to South Africa, or any other country, with more premium Huawei devices launching locally as of late, there does exist a slight chance that the company will completely pivot away from Google apps and workarounds users have been dealing with for the last four years.

Huawei South Africa has long maligned having to explain to customers how to get around using Google’s app suite. Perhaps it’s time for Huawei to do its own thing locally.