HarmonyOS 4 Upgrade Device Quantity Exceeds 100 Million, NEXT Always Has Surprises

Over 100 Million Devices Upgraded to HarmonyOS 4, More Surprises to Come - The NEXT Chapter

[Mobile China] On October 30th, Huawei publicly announced an explosive data: the number of devices upgraded to HarmonyOS 4 officially exceeded 100 million, making it the fastest-upgraded version of HarmonyOS in history. Currently, 98 models can be upgraded, and more products will soon join the HarmonyOS 4 family. In this complex year of 2023, the number of devices upgraded to HarmonyOS 4 exceeded 100 million, like a magic compass firmly guiding Huawei’s progress and affirming the goal of independent development in the Chinese software industry.

At the Xiaomi 14 series launch event, Xiaomi introduced the Xiaomi HyperOS and positioned it as a “people-centered, creating a full ecosystem operating system for individuals, cars, and homes.” The transition from MIUI to Xiaomi HyperOS is both Xiaomi’s choice for the future and a bold move in the vast tidal wave of ecosystems. Undoubtedly, self-developed operating systems like Huawei’s HarmonyOS have become the current direction, and “NEXT” always brings surprises.

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When it comes to smartphone operating systems, before the introduction of Huawei HarmonyOS, it was basically iOS and Android. Although there are many domestic smartphone manufacturers with their own systems, they are all customized based on Android. Huawei’s EMUI, Honor’s MagicUI, Xiaomi’s MIUI, OPPO’s ColorOS, vivo’s OriginOS, Meizu’s Flyme, and so on, Android is like the roots constantly providing nutrients to manufacturers.

Perhaps Huawei was the first to realize this. When they started EMUI based on Android, they began deep modifications from the ground up. After a series of surgeries, EMUI became the smoothest Android system at the time. In 2016, when Huawei released EMUI 5.0, it utilized AI-based self-learning systems, fine-grained resource scheduling through software-hardware integration, and deep optimization of Android system components, allowing Android phones to achieve sustained smoothness. The following year, EMUI 5.1 continued to exert its technological advantages in memory management, with the introduction of Ultra Memory technology, making the user experience even smoother on smartphones with the same RAM hardware foundation.

When Huawei launched the EMUI and HarmonyOS smoothness revolution, the Ark Compiler played a very important role. In 2019, at the P30 series launch event, Huawei released the Ark Compiler, a product that could lead the Android performance revolution. The Ark Compiler is a compiler developed by Huawei specifically for software manufacturers, effectively solving the inefficiency problem of “interpreting and executing at the same time” in Android programs. The Huawei Ark Compiler runs programs efficiently by executing machine code throughout the entire process, further optimizing the architecture and improving performance. Compared to the previous smoothness, the system compiled through the Huawei Ark Compiler increases operational fluency by 24%, system responsiveness by 44%, and fluency in third-party applications by 60%.

In addition to the Ark Compiler, the EROFS super file system is also a major contributor. With it, the system reading performance of smartphones is improved by 20% and space is saved by 14%, thereby maximizing the utilization of resources within the limited space of smartphones. Whether it’s the Ark Compiler or the EROFS super file system, they are actually extremely beneficial for older models, which has given Huawei’s older models a renewed magic. The concept of “keeping up with the times” actually started from that time.

Nowadays, in 2023, Android is still a top-tier presence. Apart from Huawei developing HarmonyOS, other domestic manufacturers are still developing on top of Android. Even the recently released Xiaomi Pangolin OS is based on Android and its self-developed Vela system. For this reason, Xiaomi completely rewrote the underlying architecture to create the current Xiaomi Pangolin OS. In the future, we will also see MagicOS 8, which, if nothing unexpected happens, will also be based on Android for deep development. This is still something manufacturers cannot avoid.

Where is the next destination for many operating systems? Huawei is the first to give an answer: HarmonyOS will evolve into HarmonyOS NEXT, opening a new chapter in the mobile application ecosystem. Yu Chengdong introduced that HarmonyOS continues to delve into software root technology and creates a solid HarmonyOS ecological foundation through the “Hongmeng kernel” with inherent smoothness, extreme energy efficiency, and pure security characteristics, as well as the improved energy efficiency of the “Ark Graphics Engine”. The HarmonyOS NEXT developer preview version will be open to enterprise developers in August 2023 and to all developers in the first quarter of 2024! The HarmonyOS foundation is already well-developed, with over 100 million lines of code and over 20,000 APIs.

On September 25th, Yu Chengdong announced the latest progress in the upgrade of HarmonyOS 4. In just over a month after the release of HarmonyOS 4, the number of upgraded users has exceeded 60 million, making it the fastest-upgraded version of HarmonyOS. The upcoming HarmonyOS NEXT is ready to go, and the development of native HarmonyOS applications has already begun. This marks a new chapter in the mobile application ecosystem and will bring users a smoother, smarter, and more secure native HarmonyOS app experience.

What is HarmonyOS NEXT? It is actually what people often call Pure Blood Harmony, its system base is fully self-developed, removing the traditional AOSP code, only supporting the Harmony kernel and Harmony system applications, reducing 40% of redundant code. It is worth noting that HarmonyOS NEXT can only use Hap format installation packages, which means that HarmonyOS will no longer be compatible with Android applications. In the future, an application that wants to run on a Huawei phone must have a Hap version. In this way, Huawei can better control various applications, and there will be significant improvements in terms of fluency, security, and so on.

Of course, there will also be certain problems that come with this, namely that the initial application adaptation will inevitably not meet the needs of all users. This requires a large investment of manpower, material resources, and time to develop and adapt, and ordinary consumers should consider upgrading appropriately. I believe that in the upcoming year 2024, HarmonyOS NEXT will bring us plenty of surprises, and it may debut on the Mate 70 series, so let’s wait and see.

Huawei HarmonyOS’s next stop is HarmonyOS NEXT, where Pure Blood Harmony will bring users a more ultimate experience, and it also represents a moment of leap for the current domestic operating system. As for the next stop for other domestic manufacturers’ operating systems, the direction we currently see is the ability to create a connected world based on Android + self-research. Perhaps further on, unexpected things will happen. “NEXT” always has surprises and challenges, but never lacks opportunities.

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