So to recap: yesterday, Huawei was shipping smartwatches using LiteOS, and today, it’s shipping smartwatches with “HarmonyOS,” which is based on LiteOS. Yesterday, it was shipping phones and tablets using a forked version of Android without Google services. Today, Huawei is shipping “HarmonyOS” on phones and tablets, which is forked Android without Google services. Did anything actually change here?
That about sums it up. We were promised a brand new operating system, but in reality, all they gave us is yet another Android fork, of which there are countless.
Android, Linux, Unix, etc., etc.. in a wide perspective it’s all skin on skin, is there a difference?
Not sure why we would claim flavours and tints are something different, a bit like claiming coffee variants aren’t all coffee.
There is a big difference.
As of 2017, the Android (Assuming AOSP) has 12 to 15 “millions” line of code. This is not your typical business software such as ERP. Copying and modifying and “optimizing” this magnitude of code to run nicely in your “own manufactured integrated chips” is not an easy task and is cannot be done by small teams not to mention the money that will require to run and support the Android “forking” infrastructure.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/millions-lines-of-code/#:~:text=The%20Android%20operating%20system%20runs,62%20million%20lines%20of%20code.
I am assuming OSNEWS readers are aware of this fact.
I suppose using terms like “optimizing” is where things seem to go awry. Because subjectively and fundamentally to the end user, ignoring what happens behind the scenes to make a clone/fork happen, the various flavours all come out basically the same no matter how much hardware specific optimizing occurs!
As HollyB mentions below, nothing an end user would notice.
It’s a fundamental problem with the perception of innovation in the variants. Regardless of the OS.
You don’t need to touch the majority of those “millions of lines of code”.
No, grep needs to be optimized.
Fair enough @igfenix and @cpcf.
I do not think that it’s really easy to fork something like Android. Huawei’s fault is that in the beginning, they were in denial. Trying to project that it’s an operating from scratch.
The problem for now is the ecosystem of Huawei, if they can bring it, then we would have a third OS .
Oh for the days of small and light operating systems. What do they put in there today? What do they do which earlier OS didn’t? I’m sure there are reasons and longs lists of things but nothing I would notice from an end user surface point of view.
What Windows 10 do what Windows 2000 didn’t ? Office ? Internet browsing ? 3D gaming ? Web serving ?
Naah, Windows 10 is more “secure”, that’s why we need an OS 100 times heavier to serve us with a flat UI.
Uhh how about not be buggy AF? For all the “Windows is crap” jokes I honestly cannot remember the last time I saw a BSOD, in fact these days I see more BSODs on Linux than I do windows 10. Even when dealing with insanely buggy drivers (FFS AMD would it REALLY kill ya to do a bit of QA on your GPU drivers? with a global GPU shortage not many folks are gonna have 10k baller systems like the one you use to test your drivers on) all Windows does is silently restart the crashed driver and give me an “Oh FYI this crap driver crashed”.
And say what you want about windows security but I work in PC repair and a good 95% of my work now is hardware upgrades and setting up HTPCs because I simply do not see systems riddled with malware like I did back in the day thanks to built in fully updated AV and OS updates being automatic. All the way through Win 7 I’d have systems cross my desk with expired Norton OEM AV installs and no updates since it left the factory (fun fact some OEMs would disable WU at the factory as they didn’t want to risk having an update interfere with their shovelware) just exploding with malware, these days? Honestly the only malware I see is PEBKAC where a user went out of their way to disable the security to see the dancing bunny. Anyone who thought Windows was better during the 2K/XP days? Is wearing some extra strength nostalgia goggles.
As for TFA? Yet another version of Android that won’t ever get updates so their phones will join the ever growing eWaste pile,lovely. Again say what you want about MSFT but I have Phenom IIs running the latest version of Win 10 and happily purring along and those chips are what? 12 years old now? Meanwhile I just tossed yet another smartphone in the junk drawer not because the hardware wasn’t up to snuff but because the OEM didn’t ever bother updating the OS with even basic security patches and that is with vanilla Android so I seriously doubt any of these phones will fair any better on the update front.
bassbeast,
IMHO this is exactly why we need manufacturers to be independent from software platforms. Hardware manufacturers have have an large incentive to stop supporting old hardware to encourage continuous hardware upgrade cycles. Operating systems like windows and linux can easily support hardware that’s well over 10 years old, but we’re forced to throw away mobile devices because the manufacturers no longer support them.
This doesn’t have to do with hardware OEMs being independent because frankly they have no craps to give about after sale support, what we need is governments to mandate OPEN STANDARDS just like we have in X86.
The real issue is we’ve let chip makers like Qualcomm lock everything behind patent minefields and allowed OEMs to make everything black box which if you care about AGW is simply unacceptable, all of this eWaste not only clogs landfills but is wasting precious resources so we really need to push for government mandates that open the mobile platform so that you can run Linux, Windows, Android, or any other OS that will run on ARM.
Because there is no telling how many are just like me and tossing perfectly good phones into the junk drawer or into the trash simply because they cannot even get basic security patches, hell I’m using a quad core phone with 4Gb of RAM and 32Gb of built in ROM as the most wasteful MP3 player ever simply because the OEM never bothered offering a single security patch and with it stuck on android 8 its not worth the risk.
bassbeast,
That’s what I just said though. Manufactures are against long term support because it cuts into new sales.
It helps when the party supporting the software doesn’t have the incentive to kill off hardware that is already working, debugged, etc. While natural Incompatibilities can happen such as the 32->64 bit transition, it’s relatively rare.
I agree. Unfortunately I don’t see the e-waste problem going away without some kind of intervention. Considering they’re always focusing on deregulation and corporate tax cuts, it isn’t clear to me anything is going to change any time soon.
People should understand one thing : operating systems are like cars. Not the joke about it. The truth.
In a car you can repair/switch the engine and keep the same outer shell and interior.
In an operating system you can secure/upgrade the kernel and keep the same UI.
You don’t have to change the whole car if you want to repaint it.
You don’t have to change your whole OS if you want another UI.
But they want you to sell you another car because the previous one is “obsolete”.
But they want you to sell you another OS because the previous one is “unsecure”.
Have I to go for a right-hand driving car when all I needed was a secured cabin ?
Have I to get used to a “new redesigned UI” when all I needed was a reinforced kernel ?
Fuck that bundle-it-all mentality.
Sure Windows 2000 was plagued with open doors from the 95/98 era, so was XP until SP3.
But is it really necessary to throw the baby out with the bathwater at every OS iteration ?
You’re just their puppet and have to accept what they “carefully designed for you”. even if you dislike it.
No more theming support after Windows XP, I cannot even go back to Classic UI after Windows 7.
And the benefit of that is not getting no BSOD anymore ? Should I applaud them for their ingenuity ?
Btw, I use AMD APUs and are rock solid and stable, pick your configuration.
Dude I’ve been team red since the ATI RAGE and I’m sorry but AMD drivers are shit. They were shit when they were ATI, they are shit now, hell the 5700XT was unusable at launch because the driver BSODed like crazy so if you think yours is stable? Might want to check reliability monitor and see how many silent fails you’ve had. That are you are using an old AF driver or an old AF APU because EVENTUALLY they get stable drivers…eventually.
As for changing the UI of windows? Classic start, Openshell, StartX, hell there are a ton to choose from its just you have to go third party, just like with OSX. personally I always liked Astonshell as with it you could go with anything from Win95 to Gnome, just whatever tickled your fancy.
And you can be butthurt and call people nasty names all ya want grandpa, but I like hundreds of millions actually like the new UI and are quite happy with it but like i said if you want to go back to the Jurassic it takes all of 3 minutes to install a new shell, nobody is forcing you to take the new UI if you don’t like it.
@bassbeat
Historically ATI drivers were always more conformant with OpenGl (and likely D3D too) and their hardware quality and graphics quality was always higher than NVidia. The reason why ATI drivers had a reputation is NVidia simply had edgier marketing and produced drivers which were more lose with conformancy and took more hardware and driver shortcuts to produce output which was slightly faster but of lower fidelity.
Lots of game developers used to and may sometime still only test against one IHV not range of IHV’s. As loads got sucked in by Nvidia’s game developer programme and were too lazy to check against ATI their games graphics API code were often buggy and found to be faulty when subsequently run on ATI.
If you have a fault with your graphics historically it is almost certain the fault is with your code not the driver.
@bassbeast
My experience with the 5700XT and AMD since the rise of Ryzen is the opposite of yours. The 5700XT I got at launch crashed all of once, and the AMD+x570 setup it’s installed in has been rock solid. I do agree with your however that changing how the UI looks is not exactly difficult.
@friedchicken
@bassbeast
I think you don’t get it : when I upgrade OS essentially for a more secured kernel, I don’t want my UI sabotaged in the name of “whatever you like” and have to rely on third party software that may not be absolutely “conformant” and lead to other bugs. I bought WindowBlinds only to find out many themes are paying scams with only half the functionalities supported, some ridden with bugs. So what ? XP’s Oliva theme or Windows 7’s themes were enough for me, but they were removed to make room for what ? Interactive tutorials ? The return of Clippy in 4k ?
@Kochise
I made exactly two statements… My experience with the 5700XT & AMD on x570 has been great, and changing the look of the UI is not difficult.
Both of those are true so what exactly do you think it is that I `don’t get`?
@friedchicken
What you “don’t get” is that I don’t want to rely on an external solution to bring back what was removed by Microsoft. And no, “changing the look of the UI” is not that easy. You mean switching theme to have another wallpaper and color ? Is that all what you can do now to “changing the look of the UI” ? Such a great success…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OGOwzGbnFw
If operating systems were made by car manufacturers we would still be using the (modern) equivalent of 20 year old hardware but getting current I7 performance for most tasks The latest ‘Toyota OS’ would probably require half as much ram and storage as ‘Toyota OS’ did 20 years ago and be 4x as fast. It would be fully featured and have every bit of software 99% of users need fully integrated.
friedchicken,
I think the point was they removed a lot of theming and customization. For example personally I’ve always set it to classic win2k theme. It’s not the end of the world if it’s not there, but it really felt like “metro” UI changes ended up throwing away many years of UI design expertise. That’s just my opinion. Windows 10 is better than it’s predecessor, but I have trouble seeing window borders when their backgrounds are the same. Windows have become so featureless that I cannot tell where one terminal window starts and another ends. Is there a setting to make window borders thicker and easier to see like they used to be?
I’m not saying it just to be contrarian but it’s the first thing I think of when you say “changing how the UI looks is not exactly difficult”. Do I need to use a 3rd party tool? What do you recommend?
@Alfman : use https://winaero.com/winaero-tweaker/ (pretty much what was TweakUI to XP) and activate the hidden ‘AeroLite’ theme, you’ll be able to set the border width (4px is enough, close to what Windows 7 borders were). Again, having to use a third party software just to reach hidden settings. So useless Windows has became.
I think the car situation is apt. The new version of a car is always differently styled. It has to be, you get a certain amount of sales just from the appearance of the car/os regardless of weather or not it has a better engine inside. And yes in both cases sometimes you have to redesign the outside when you make safely changes. They could still sell the 1990’s ford escort body basically, it would have to be 30% bigger to update to current safety standards. I think the same is true of a windows 200 skin on a windows 10 kernel. basically the same but with more disk space used, more memory used, more cpu used.
@Bill Shooter
As with computer use it’s the same with games. Portable skills do matter and when you get into art and narrative and the richer aspects of interaction experience to have things constantly change does ruin the relevance of individual games to real life skills and experience. You need to understand concepts like how design patterns or strategies port between different mediums and how in the right combination they relate to the human experience as a psychological and social animal to get it.
I cannot actually remember anyone saying how a game made much of a difference to their world view or relationships or anything beyond hand-eye coordination.
It’s a bit subtle but then I could be expecting too much.
@Kochise
Wrong. I `get` the content of your opinion just fine, I simply don’t care because it’s irrelevant to my reply to Bassbeast. And yes, changing the look of the UI _is_ easy. There are a number of simple tools to do this for you. You not wanting to use them doesn’t change that. Don’t confuse inconvenience with difficulty.
@Alfman
If Kochise’s point was that Microsoft removed theming and customization, what does that have to do with either my two statements? Both of which were in reply to something @bassbeast said, not Kochise. For whatever reason he decided to rant-reply to me claiming I `don’t get` whatever he said, that I wasn’t even replying to. He seems confused or not bothering to read what he’s responding to before doing so.
@friedchicken : “He seems confused or not bothering to read what he’s responding to before doing so.”
Are you serious ? Let’s replay it backward :
@Kochise : No more theming support after Windows XP, I cannot even go back to Classic UI after Windows 7.
@bassbeast : nobody is forcing you to take the new UI if you don’t like it.
@friedchicken : I do agree with your however that changing how the UI looks is not exactly difficult.
Now let’s see what I can do “if I don’t like the new UI” :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2fL1RRsuTw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70N4wZRb4-Q
Wow, so trivial obviously ! And will break with the next Windows bi-annual update ! Cool.
Couldn’t Microsoft have left that classic theme for the old fashioned like me ? It’s not like their OS is already full of garbage and crippleware that will never be used anyway. Or maybe they’ll bring it back as a Store application like Nintendo do with its classic games ? Who knows.
I just wanted, like before, to personalize my desktop and select classic theme, it’s all what I wanted, Nothing difficult. But now I have to rely on unreliable tweaks for that ?
friedchicken,
Everyone here has a different opinion about it and there’s nothing wrong with that. I personally didn’t like the direction microsoft went with the UI, but I know this stuff is inherently subjective and nobody’s going to be right or wrong. We should talk about something less divisive like the middle east, haha.
@kochise
I agree with this. It’s similar with graphic programming. If you code around a broken driver it gives no incentive for the IHV to fix their driver. I think it’s the same for Windows. I’m not happy with their current desktop design and I’m not going to let them off the hook with a workaround which breaks anyway. I’m sticking to my guns which is that the Windows user interface (and probably a few other things) is not as it should be.
Actually, it just crossed my mind Windows early adopters who beta test the thing may not be the best people for Microsoft to base their decisions on and certainly not in aggregate, nor is reliance on automated systems necessarily helpful.
People shouldn’t have to fight their desktop just for using it.
@Kochise
You’re obviously upset over Microsoft’s UI choices, but none of your misdirected lashing out at my reply to @bassbeast has any relevance. Nothing you say will change my experience with `new` AMD, and nothing about you not wanting to use simple tools to achieve your desired UI look makes it hard. Instead of using 1% of your energy using what makes it easy, you’re using 100% of your energy complaining how hard it is. It’s like choosing to walk over a mountain and ranting about it being difficult instead of just driving a car through the tunnel. *shrug*
@Alfman
I haven’t read the internet EULA recently but I swear it says everything you find there is fact and all opinions are wrong. 😉
You don’t need 100 million lines of extra code to fix a few security problems. You actually need to completely rewrite the OS if it is that fundamentally flawed. NT was ruined by adding a whole lot of consumer grade shit from Windows 3.1, ignoring basic security principles (eg proper administrator control) for the sake of user convenience and endless lazy cosmetic hacks to an otherwise excellent OS.
Okay – this is a rant…. If they start fixing the stuff that is bad with Android, that would really help them. But if they basically reskin Android and call it their own OS… I don’t really see the point. I would love them to fix the fuster cluck that is Bluetooth in Android. The Android BLE implementation is total crap. The only way to program against it reliably is to push all access to the main thread. Yes. It is like writing VB apps in the 1990s. Even DOS TSR would be easier. And you ignore this? Here is your GATT error because you dared to read or write to a characteristic from the wrong thread. You know… I don’t care if all access is from the same thread – I can handle that. What I can’t handle is it being the Main thread. That is a toy OS implementation.
They’ll do the bare minimum that gives them a point of difference at the least cost to maximise profit, it’s the only certainty.
Isn’t this one of the only phone companies that offers phones for sale that don’t come with Google services? I know there’s many, many forks of Android, but unless a user installs it themselves (which is rare) don’t they all come with Google services? That seems pretty unique to me.
DISCLAIMER: I didn’t read the article. 😀
No Chinese domestic market phone has any Google services installed by default. They use their own AOSP builds with Chinese apps
https://www.huaweiupdate.com/hongmeng-openharmony-2-0-has-4-6-million-lines-of-key-code/
The L2 branch of openharmony has zero android code according to the link above.
Of course it has to have some kind of compatibility layer to be able to run android apps, this was planned, this was required by the users which expect to be able to run android apps on harmony.
Yeah – the real problem is that they’re using the same “Harmony OS” name for 2 completely different operating systems, where one is not Android at all (and is being used on watches for now) and one is a fork of Android (and is being used on smartphones for now).
I suspect that Huawei and Google are planning a similar strategy (rolling out their new OS on a smaller/simpler niche to test it out before they attempt to roll it out on smartphones), and that eventually Huawei will switch to “not Android Harmony OS” on phones (and Google will switch to “not Android Fuchsia” on phones); and that eventually the (deliberate?) confusion caused by using the same “Harmony OS” name for 2 different operating systems will disappear (because “Android Harmony OS” will disappear).
Brendan,
Yeah, we faced similar problems with microsoft’s “edge browser” being two different browsers. Especially because many websites were only compatible with one of them.
I wonder if google will start using the “android” brand with fuchsia devices. That would drive tech people like us nuts, but marketing-wise it may be easier for google to convince users to switch to fuchsia if they’re under the impression they’re buying an “android” phone (as in what android used to be).
It’s too hard to guess; but I’d expect Google to push Fuchsia as a new brand. My reasons are:
a) Google are a marketing company (not like they’d struggle to get their own adverts seen). They probably already have databases stuffed full of “who buys which phones when” data sitting there ready to load into their high-precision targeted spam cannon.
b) Any compatibility concerns can be addressed elsewhere (e.g. just putting “100% Android compatible” in a phone’s list of features would probably cover it).
c) If there’s better features (e.g. longer support from being able to update OS/kernel without updating vendor’s drivers) the “new and shiny” approach can highlight that.
d) For a while; Fuchsia will be competing against Android (not all vendors would switch at the same time) so it won’t just be tech people being driven nuts.
e) For marketing, there’s a lot of “not too rational” psychology involved (mostly because consumers assume price is indicative of quality). For this; I think the smartest strategy would be to artificially increase the price of Fuchsia phones for 6+ months (maybe even make it a little more expensive than iOS) when it’s introduced (train consumers to think that Fuchsia is worth more/higher quality) and then let the price fall back gradually (“Woohoo – the $1000 phone is on sale for $900”) to a point that’s still more expensive than Android phones but cheaper than iOS (price bracketing – consumers prefer the “not too cheap, not too expensive” option because they assume the cheaper option is nasty and the expensive option is for rich snobs). This is hard to do if you don’t differentiate the brand.
Of course none of this really applies to Harmony OS – in western countries, anything from China tends to begin with a “cheap and nasty” assumption regardless of what it is. Huawei’s biggest strengths are an “almost captive” local/Chinese market and (to a lesser extent) backlash against USA mega-corps (I think it’s a little funny actually – people worry that stuff from China might spy on them and then line up to buy Google and Apple products that definitely are spying on them). If I were Huawei, every time Apple or Google get caught (e.g. the recent “Google deliberately made it hard to disable location tracking” article) I’d be exploiting it to push a “we’re not as evil as our competitors” message; and that might be a plausible reason for Huawei’s current attempts at trying to prevent any association between Harmony OS and Android (for “Android based Harmony OS” on their latest smartphones). For the local Chinese market it’s even easier to explain – after Trump’s “USA vs. China tariff war” (is that still going? I lost track but I think Biden hasn’t changed anything) it makes perfect sense to me for Chinese companies to want to disassociate themselves from anything from USA.
@Brendan
This is true in many ways and not always true in others. Most of my jewellery comes from China. Most men wouldn’t have a clue how much it costs. It’s noticeable but I find below the radar. Its perceived value changes depending on what else I’m wearing.
I’m also wise to marketing tricks so hold back. I’ll let all the yahoos pay top price and hold on and hold on past the marketing delays until they’re down to the hold-out then wait some more.
Some retail store buyers really know their stuff. While it may not be huge factor in consumer goods sometimes they get something in which is cheap and excellent quality. It happens with wine. It may be true of other things too.
Everything in China was copied:
1. Fighter jets – From Russia and U.S.
2. Cars – From Japan and US
3. Railway tech/Trains – From Europe, Japan and U.S.
4. Space Station – From International Space Station (Japan, Europe, US)
this seems a bit easier to copy.5. Mars exploration / Mars Rovers- From US (NASA)
7. Software – From U.S.
8. Chips – From U.S.
9. I could go on and on
You see, China has never invented anything, all it does is copy everything from mostly the West. My nation, I would like to become China!
The minute the article says “China” xenophobic comments appear like clockwork…
javiercero1,
Xenophobia is indeed a problem. Ironically we’ve lost ground in many industries and our heyday seems to be getting further behind us. We’ve notoriously failed to invest in public infrastructure. Take trains, we may have had trains early on, but our infrastructure has largely fallen behind other countries including china. Many of us were sad to see NASA loose the ability to send astronauts to space. We’ve offshored so many of our industries to more competitive parts of the world that many are now non-existent here. Take the chip industry, we’ve become helpless due to world supply shortages. We may not be the world’s economic superpower for much longer, so I don’t think we should be gloating.
I do have strong criticism for china, but it revolves around human rights and freedom. Civil rights are important and acts like Beijing overthrowing democracy in Hong Kong are regressive. The fragility of democracy worldwide is my biggest concern right now. I feel like we take democracy too much for granted and there’s an alarming acceptance of authoritarianism. A mass democracy ending event used to be inconceivable, now it’s becoming more conceivable 🙁
Alfman, the protesters in Hongkong are destructive,just review the footage, they protest through violence.
For human rights abuses especially, in the Xianjiang region, ask the OIC.
MANY fake news about China’s supposedly genocide against Uyghurs, qre propagated By Thom, see his Twitter posts.
AER,
It’s much more complicated than that. Some people resort to violence, this is true everywhere in the world. However some of the violence was escalated by china itself. The majority in Hong Kong don’t want China there and were protesting the passage of Beijing laws and political prisoners, which is both a big cause of the protests and the reason China is actively overthrowing democracy there.
For better or worse, violence is a natural human reaction to freedoms being taken away. If this happened here, you can bet on there being violence here as well and arguably we would be on the side of those fighting for freedom. Of course we don’t want violence, but against the backdrop of tyranny, authoritarianism and even dictatorship it gets far more complicated.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/26/xi-jinping-china-presidential-limit-scrap-dictator-for-life
It’s not just Thom man, a lot of the world recognizes the existence of their detainment and camps.
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2020/02/asia/xinjiang-china-karakax-document-intl-hnk/
The rise in authoritarianism may end up being far more dangerous to the world than we realize, we shouldn’t dismiss it when democracies fall.
My comment is sarcastic.
This is not really Android if what was spoken here is true:
https://www.huaweicentral.com/heres-why-huawei-harmonyos-still-supports-android-applications/
Rooting your Huawei
https://mobilexfiles.com/phones/huawei/huawei_y7_2018/root/
and you get rid of android