1778 days, how the native HarmonyOS became an independent operating system

Late LatePost

2024-06-25 18:56Posted on the official account of Beijing LatePost

Yu Chengdong said, "There is a base and an ecology, which is the real operating system." ”

In August 2019, Huawei officially launched the first-generation HarmonyOS operating system, and Yu Chengdong, executive director of Huawei, chairman of the terminal BG, and chairman of the intelligent car solution BU, said at the time that it was mainly an Internet of Things system, and if the Android, an open-source operating system led by Google, was not open to Huawei, the HarmonyOS could be used on mobile phones.

In the following year, the situation facing Huawei took a sharp turn for the worse, and the "if" scenario envisioned by Yu Chengdong really happened, and Huawei officially launched the mobile version of HarmonyOS. In order to ensure user experience and reduce developer costs, Huawei chose a compromise strategy at that time, making the HarmonyOS compatible with Android apps. But it's not a standalone operating system after all.

Last week, June 21, Huawei took a key step in promoting the HarmonyOS system: the new version of HarmonyOS is no longer compatible with Android apps. Yu Chengdong announced at the 2024 Huawei Developer Conference that HarmonyOS NEXT, a native HarmonyOS system using a self-developed kernel, was officially released, and beta testing for developers and pioneer users was launched. HarmonyOS NEXT can be used not only on mobile phones, but also on IoT devices such as tablets, headphones, and watches.

"Huawei has spent 10 years doing what its European and American counterparts have done for more than 30 years to achieve a comprehensive breakthrough in the core technology of the operating system, which is independent and controllable." Yu Chengdong said at the scene.

When Yu Chengdong introduced the new HarmonyOS system, the descriptor also changed from the previous "all-scenario distributed operating system" to "all-scene intelligent operating system": HarmonyOS NEXT also embeds AI technologies such as large models, calling it Harmony Intelligence. This is also a new direction that major operating system developers around the world are working on.

Doing a good job in basic functions is only the first step in making an independent operating system, and more importantly, the ecology, that is, how many applications can be used by users on this operating system. In the past few decades, there have been many companies that want to make an independent operating system, and most of them have fallen into the ecosystem.

Huawei has a unique advantage: relying on the accumulation of the past five years, Huawei has installed the previous generations of HarmonyOS systems into 900 million devices.

Huawei's mobile phone business, which is the most critical to the promotion of the new system, is now rising rapidly. According to statistics from research agency Canalys, in the first quarter of 2024, Huawei's mobile phone shipments in the Chinese market increased by 70% year-on-year, and its share reached 17%, once again becoming the No. 1 in China.

Yu Chengdong said that it is expected that by the fourth quarter of this year, with the launch of the new Huawei Mate 70 series, HarmonyOS NEXT will move towards large-scale commercial use.

HarmonyOS NEXT 推广计划表。

From the Internet of Things to mobile phones, ten years of research and development have laid the foundation for Hongmeng's independence

Mobile phones are the key to Huawei's promotion of the independent HarmonyOS system, but it is not the reason why the HarmonyOS system was born.

Huawei's development of the HarmonyOS system can be traced back to the Internet of Things (IoT) boom in 2015. Huawei estimated that there would be 100 billion IoT devices worldwide by 2025. The problem for the industry as a whole is that IoT devices don't rely on a single device to do their job like a mobile phone or computer, and often require multiple devices to work together.

It is common practice in the industry to use WiFi or Bluetooth modules to connect devices with different operating systems. In Huawei's view, this is not the optimal solution, the system on the device is like a language, the language is not understood, it is very troublesome to connect by other methods, and the consumer experience will not be good. "If the problem is not solved, it will be difficult for IoT to explode." Huawei's HarmonyOS development team said.

After the launch of LiteOS, the IoT operating system in 2015, Huawei began to develop an operating system based on it that could be used on different hardware, which later evolved into the HarmonyOS system.

Huawei chose one of the most difficult solutions: it is not easy to develop an operating system for a single device, let alone build a system that connects multiple devices. At the time, no operating system could do that.

In Huawei's vision, mobile phones are also a type of IoT device, because the scale of revenue is large, which is crucial to the company's development. "In the future, Huawei's consumer business may reach hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue, and the larger the scale, the less able it will withstand fluctuations. The foundation (operating system) is not in your own hands, it is too dangerous. A person involved in the early development of HarmonyOS said.

In the early days of promoting the HarmonyOS system, Huawei was cautious. When the HarmonyOS system was officially released in August 2019, the United States had already launched the first round of sanctions, and Yu Chengdong also emphasized that it was "mainly oriented to IoT devices", and Android would be prioritized for mobile phones.

This choice is normal. Android has been around for 12 years, and processor vendors, device companies, and developers have formed a large and solid ecosystem. Any company that wants to build a system from scratch that can replace it will have to compete with most of the industry. During this period, many companies invested huge resources to promote self-developed mobile phone operating systems, such as Samsung, Blackberry, Microsoft, etc., but they all ended in failure and dragged down business development.

In less than a year, Huawei has run out of options. Huawei's mobile phones cannot use the GMS service, which is deeply tied to Android, overseas, and advanced processors can no longer be used in China. In 2020, Huawei's mobile phone sales decreased by more than 20%. At the end of the year, Huawei began to use the HarmonyOS system on mobile phones, and in addition to preparing for the replacement of Android, it also carried a defensive task: to make up for the lack of hardware as much as possible and keep users in the Huawei system.

This means that it is not enough for Huawei to develop a system that can rival its peers' Android-based modifications, they have to find a way to do better.

Judging from the results, the HarmonyOS system during the transition period has completed the task to a certain extent. According to data from Aurora's Yuehu iApp, in August last year, about 15 out of every 100 users with mobile phones in the Chinese market were using Huawei mobile phones, which is lower than Apple and OPPO, but higher than brands such as vivo, Xiaomi, and Honor. After the release of the Mate 60 series, Huawei's mobile phone sales began to rebound.

Although it has become more urgent to use the HarmonyOS system in mobile phones, Huawei has always emphasized that it is an "all-scenario" system, and has invested a lot of resources to make it better adapt to different IoT devices, and has developed it as a key function to improve the ability to interconnect multiple devices.

The unique positioning has also promoted the rapid expansion of the HarmonyOS system. According to Yu Chengdong, more than 900 million devices have now used the HarmonyOS system, attracting 2.54 million developers, which are the basis for Huawei to promote the new version of HarmonyOS.

The HarmonyOS system has been installed on more than 900 million devices.

From compatible to independent, the rebound in hardware sales is a key variable

The function of the operating system is to schedule and allocate hardware resources (memory, storage, computing power, etc.) in the device, so that different applications can run smoothly.

The most important of these is the "kernel" that manages hardware resources and a large number of running applications - HarmonyOS NEXT is called "pure-blooded HarmonyOS" because the kernel and other basic components are developed by Huawei and are no longer compatible with Android.

Prior to this, Huawei's path to developing HarmonyOS was similar to the industry's usual path: to innovate on the basis of existing operating systems.

Apple's iOS and Google's Android both do this. Apple's iOS kernel is borrowed from the Unix system released in 1973, while the Google-led Android kernel is a variant of the Linux kernel released in 1991.

Huawei's previous generations of HarmonyOS also used Linux in its kernel, which is a hybrid of Linux, HarmonyOS microkernel and LiteOS, which guarantees performance and makes HarmonyOS compatible with different devices: for example, the HarmonyOS system on mobile phones was initially compatible with Android applications.

This is Huawei's compromise when the hardware is in a weak position. At that time, Huawei could only use Qualcomm or MediaTek processors, and these suppliers had long adapted Android based on the Linux kernel, so Huawei HarmonyOS also used Linux. And even if Huawei made a completely independent HarmonyOS system at that time, it would be difficult for developers to invest resources in developing applications specifically for HarmonyOS, after all, in the Chinese mobile phone market, Huawei had fallen out of the top five sales at that time.

By 2023, Huawei's hardware will make a strong comeback, and the sales of mobile phones, Pads, cars and other products will increase significantly. Huawei has more reasons to convince developers and users to accept a standalone operating system. In July last year, Huawei officially launched the "Pure-Blood Hongmeng" sprint.

In the latest HarmonyOS NEXT, Huawei has completely replaced the original Linux kernel with its self-developed HarmonyOS kernel. Based on the classic microkernel architecture, the HarmonyOS kernel proposes a hybrid kernel architecture called meta-OS. When the HarmonyOS system is deployed on different devices, the combined kernel can be adapted according to the device performance to ensure performance, efficiency, and security. Yu Chengdong said: Compared with HarmonyOS 4, the performance of the whole machine of pure-blooded HarmonyOS has increased by 30%.

In addition to the kernel, Huawei has also developed the programming language Cangjie, the Gaussian database ArtData on the device side, and the file management system EROFS for HarmonyOS NEXT, which together form the underlying layer of the HarmonyOS NEXT operating system.

The completion of the development of key components such as the HarmonyOS kernel is a key step towards an independent operating system.

HarmonyOS NEXT 系统的各个组件。

Engage users with full scenarios, intelligence, and security

There is a clear network effect on the operating system. The more users it attracts, the more developers are willing to invest resources in developing their apps; And with more applications, it will increase the value of the entire system and attract more users.

The key to starting this positive cycle is whether they can make an operating system that provides a better user experience and lower application development costs.

At the developer conference, He Gang, CEO of Huawei Device BG, introduced the three major features of HarmonyOS NEXT in detail.

何刚介绍 HarmonyOS NEXT 的三大特征。

- All scenarios: Allow multi-device interoperability permissions to third-party applications

When Huawei released the HarmonyOS system, it has always emphasized that it is an "all-scenario" operating system that can open up a variety of devices.

The whole scenario of the HarmonyOS system is mainly divided into two aspects: developer and user experience. On the developer side, the most typical feature of HarmonyOS is "one-time development and multi-terminal deployment". For example, Taobao only needs to develop and maintain one version, and the HarmonyOS version of Taobao can be deployed to various devices with different screen sizes and hardware performance.

On the user side, Huawei has improved the soft bus technology in HarmonyOS NEXT, which allows you to connect different devices three times faster than the previous generation of HarmonyOS, allowing you to connect up to four devices at the same time and consume less power. And when connecting different devices, users no longer need to operate manually, just close the device.

For example, when a user uses a tablet to open a DingTalk meeting, if you want to switch to the phone, you only need to hold the phone close to the tablet, and the DingTalk icon on the phone will automatically pop up, and you can continue the meeting on the phone with a single click. In apps such as WPS and Xiaohongshu, users can also import pictures from their mobile phones directly into the documents they are editing on their tablets. Users can also edit documents opened on their phones on their tablets.

Hold your phone close to the pad where DingTalk is turned on for a meeting, and the meeting can be quickly switched to your phone.

-Native intelligence: Intelligent assistant supported by large models to open up third-party applications

Almost all mobile phone manufacturers are exploring how to integrate large models with operating systems. Most companies' solutions only stay at the level of self-contained applications, such as large models that can only search the content in the mobile phone's own information, documents, emails and other apps to complete specific tasks.

In "Pure-Blood HarmonyOS", Huawei has integrated large models and systems more deeply. Similar to other companies' features, the new HarmonyOS system can change the style of photos with large models, such as turning them into hand-drawn drawings and eliminating passers-by in photos.

Huawei has also revamped the built-in assistant Xiaoyi with a large model deployed locally and in the cloud, allowing it to remember 23 different types of data, help users automatically fill in forms, and have stronger image understanding and reasoning capabilities, which can solve more than 300 needs, such as helping visually impaired users see what food is in the refrigerator, converting a table image into a table document, automatically sending a text message to a friend to agree on the time and place to play football on the weekend, or searching for materials from yesterday's meeting and sending them to customers by email.

Drag the book cover to Xiaoyi, and it can call Himalaya to search for the corresponding audiobook.

In the new HarmonyOS system, the built-in assistant "Xiaoyi" can also be deeply embedded in third-party applications. For example, if a user sees a book of interest in a website and wants to listen to it, he can directly drag it to Xiaoyi, which is built at the bottom edge of the screen, and Xiaoyi can search for the corresponding resources in the Himalayas; Say to it "Use DingTalk to pull so-and-so, so-and-so to have a meeting", and it can automatically open DingTalk, find contacts, and initiate meetings.

At the same time, Huawei also divides users' needs into scenarios such as travel, sports, life, and office, integrates different applications into them, and uses Xiaoyi to make unified scheduling and formulate personalized solutions. For example, when users want to travel, Xiaoyi will call up apps such as Tongcheng Travel according to the number of travelers, departure time, etc., automatically book air tickets and hotels, and then cooperate with other applications to suggest itinerary arrangements for users, such as where to stay, where to play, what to eat, etc.

- Intrinsic security: Prohibits apps from invoking 9 types of permissions such as call logs, and prevents apps from seeing sensitive information such as entire albums

The use of the new kernel of "pure-blooded Hongmeng" also gives Huawei a stronger control over the operating system. Huawei has developed a security architecture called "Star Shield", which has more than 200 built-in detection mechanisms in the application market, so that code and applications that do not meet the requirements cannot be put on the shelves or installed in the system. If a user downloads an app that violates the rules while running, it will be banned.

Huawei also strictly restricts the ability of apps to call user data. On the one hand, Huawei prohibits apps from obtaining nine types of unreasonable privacy permissions, such as call logs, text messages, and installed app lists. "Once you allow the app to access the SMS permission, all kinds of your information may be seen, including bank information, transfer information, family information, etc., which is not very reasonable." He Gang said.

HarmonyOS NEXT 中禁止应用调用的多项权限。

When an app must call user data to complete a specific operation, such as calling an album image to set a profile picture, Huawei has set up a "secure access mechanism" to allow the app to only read the images selected by the user, instead of opening the entire album gallery to the app as some operating systems do. A similar mechanism is also used by Huawei for high-frequency data such as cameras, locations, files, contacts, and clipboards.

In addition, Huawei has developed specific security models for different users. If the new system's Underage Mode works for all apps, parents only need to turn on "Underage Mode" in the system settings, and all apps can only show content that is suitable for their children.

For office users, the HarmonyOS system has a built-in system-level file encryption and sharing function, and only authorized users can view Word, PDF and other documents processed by this function.

From the perspective of the above three functions, Huawei is trying to make full use of the permissions at the operating system level to develop new functions and form differentiated advantages such as multi-device linkage and security.

In the field of smartphones, only Apple has been able to do this before, and with the independent new version of the HarmonyOS system, Huawei also has such capabilities.

Ecology is a challenge, and large models bring new opportunities

The significant increase in sales of hardware such as mobile phones is the advantage of Huawei's promotion of the independent HarmonyOS system. In turn, the promotion of the independent HarmonyOS system is also an adventure for Huawei's mobile phone business. If the HarmonyOS system experience is not satisfactory, it may also drag down the sales of products such as mobile phones. This is destined to be a battle, and there is no turning back from the bow.

Huawei has set more specific goals for the stand-alone HarmonyOS system. Yu Chengdong said that their survey found that the top 5,000 apps take up 99.9% of consumers' mobile phone time. Huawei's first step in establishing the HarmonyOS native ecosystem is to encourage developers of these 5,000 applications to develop applications for HarmonyOS.

Yu Chengdong's introduction to the development progress of HarmonyOS native applications, more than 1,500 have been completed on the shelves.

Large-scale application migrations aren't easy. Yao Dong, vice president of Kingsoft Office, said that it took more than 8 months to develop the first version of HarmonyOS native WPS.

Huawei uses a number of methods to speed up this process. A Huawei person involved in the development of the HarmonyOS system said that they would send Huawei engineers to companies that develop applications for HarmonyOS and work with each other.

As of June this year, more than 1,500 of the top 5,000 apps in Huawei's statistics have been listed on the HarmonyOS App Marketplace.

Together with the first batch of HarmonyOS app developers, Huawei has also created app development templates in more than 20 industries, including news, finance, government affairs, and e-commerce. "Just do it." Gong Ti, President of Huawei's Device BG Software Dept., said that 80% of the public feature code was reused during the development of the Hongmeng version of People's Daily Online+, which greatly shortened the development time.

Compared to iOS and Android, which have been developing for many years and have millions of apps, HarmonyOS NEXT, which has started developer beta testing, has just taken a small step in building an ecosystem.

However, in terms of transforming the operating system with large models, "Pure-blooded Hongmeng" is on the same starting line as other systems. Apple, Microsoft, Google and other mainstream operating system developers are exploring how to integrate large models into the system, and no company has officially promoted the integration of large model operating systems in China.

Huawei also has a clear advantage in developing an operating system that deeply integrates large models. With the release of "Pure-Blood HarmonyOS", Huawei has become a rare equipment manufacturer that simultaneously develops its own processors, operating systems, hardware, large models, cloud processors, and data centers, which can start from all aspects to maximize performance.

In the early days of developing the HarmonyOS system, Huawei analyzed the successes and failures of operating systems in the PC and mobile industries over the past two decades, and learned that only when the industry is upgrading and transforming can a new operating system have the foundation for success.

The boom in the still developing intelligent Internet of Things and the emerging large-scale model AI technology have brought opportunities for industrial upgrading, and now may be the time for a new mainstream operating system to be made bigger and bigger.

"Eight thousand miles of clouds and moons, ten years of sword casting will be brilliant in the end." This is how a Huawei source described the development process of HarmonyOS. The new version of HarmonyOS that is no longer compatible with Android is an autonomous and controllable operating system, which has changed the status quo that the world's mainstream operating system is developed and operated by a few companies in Europe and the United States. Now the HarmonyOS native app is in full sprint. As Yu Chengdong said: "There is a base and an ecology, which is the real operating system." ”

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