The wait is about to end: millions of Huawei users around the world, orphaned by Google's Android OS updates, will soon be able to switch to HarmonyOS
HarmonyOS, the "alternative" operating system to Google Android developed by Huawei for its smartphones, is almost ready for global launch, even outside of China. Also Italian Huawei users, therefore, will soon be able to try it on their phones.
There is no official date yet, but there is the ufficiality that the operating system for Huawei smartphones and tablets will arrive in 2022: it has been confirmed by Derek Yu, Vice President for Central Eastern Europe, Nordic & Canada regions of Huawei Consumer Business Group, that is the division of Huawei that also produces phones and tablets. This is, it's fair to remember, the first time a Huawei executive has openly talked about the launch of HarmonyOS outside of China and, unfortunately, he did so in a fairly general way without even communicating the month of launch, nor whether the alternative to Android will be offered simultaneously for all Huawei smartphones or whether the release will be staggered over the next year.
HarmonyOS will be faster than Android
What Yu did say, though, is that the made-in-Huawei OS will be faster than the made-in-Google one: users can expect a smartphone performance boost of around 10 percent.
Words that should be taken with the benefit of the doubt, although it must be said that a Huawei OS, written only for Huawei phones, is far easier to optimize than Android that has to run on hundreds of different models, without creating problems for anyone.
300 million smartphones with HarmonyOS
While non-Chinese Huawei users will still have to wait a few months before they can try HarmonyOS, those Chinese who have already installed it were over 100 million in mid-September, over 120 million at the end of September, and over 150 million at the beginning of November.
The company's goal is to reach 250-300 million users in China by the end of the year, and then target the rest of the world with the release of the global version of the operating system. The numbers are important, because the more an operating system is installed, the easier it is for bugs and problems to pop up.
Outside China, Huawei can't afford to launch an operating system that's limping along: HarmonyOS must work well right away, or it would be yet another image loss for the company.