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Huawei only got to savor a few months at the meridian of the smartphone heap before the US government knocked it down a peg. Following the Commerce Section's deportment against the Chinese megafirm, Huawei has been unable to apply Google services on its new phones. The company'south solution was to develop HarmonyOS, a new operating system that would supercede Android, according to Huawei. Now that we've gotten our get-go real expect at HarmonyOS, one thing is clear: this is simply Android with a peel.

As long equally Huawei is on the Commerce Department'due south "Entity Listing," it cannot exercise business with whatever US company unless it has been granted a special license by the authorities. Fifty-fifty some foreign companies that use Us technology, such as ARM Holdings, have been forced to cutting ties with Huawei. As a result, the last several Huawei flagship phones have shipped without Google's apps, but they were still Android.

The HarmonyOS beta is available, and this software is allegedly coming to retail phones this year. Ron Amadeo from ArsTechnica signed upwardly to be a HarmonyOS developer to see what the Chinese telecom giant has to offer, and the results were surprising. Before Huawei will even show you HarmonyOS, you lot need to sign up every bit a dev and verify your identity by sending pictures of your passport and credit carte du jour. This process takes 2 days, and at the cease of information technology, you don't even get to download the software. Instead, the emulator streams HarmonyOS from a Chinese virtualization server.

HarmonyOS, which is to say, Android.

While poking effectually the laggy remote interface, Amadeo discovered HarmonyOS is still just Android. Huawei's development documents, which are written in a fashion so confusing as to experience intentional, don't make any mention of the platform's Android lineage. In fact, Amadeo was unable to find anything functionally different than Huawei's Android 10 phones running its EMUI skin. Many of the system files still include the give-and-take "Android," but a few have gotten "Android" swapped for "HarmonyOS." Only changing a few words doesn't make this a new operating system.

Huawei is complimentary to release this affair called HarmonyOS for its phones, only it can't call information technology Android — the name is trademarked by Google. Having no allegiance to Google will, however, let Huawei to alter more of the Bone downwards the line, creating a true Android fork like Amazon's Burn Bone. This might still work out alright for Huawei, which is still selling millions of phones in Red china and other Asian markets. However, this isn't a new operating system come to compete with Android and iOS.

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