Huawei today announced two new development updates at the Huawei Developers Conference 2.0 Together 2020 virtual event – the arrival of the company’s proprietary HarmonyOS 2.0 (still based on Android) and EMUI 11.
HarmonyOS 2.0
The second iteration of HarmonyOS 2.0 (HongMeng OS in China), will be launching in beta form first to a few users starting from the 10th of September 2020. The beta testing is scheduled to end in December and that is also when end users will start to receive the HarmonyOS update.
According to Huawei, the beta SDK is now available to all developers and it includes the smartwatch, smart TV, and automotive head unit. Developers can start to build their apps and optimize them for HarmonyOS before Huawei phones with HarmonyOS 2.0 officially starts getting pushed out to the end users. Speaking of devices with HarmonyOS, they are expected to make an official debut as soon as 2021.
Huawei also unveiled OpenHarmony (OH) project, which is the open-source version of HarmonyOS. This will be similar to the AOSP (Android Open Source Project) Project. Starting today, OH deployment is only available to devices with up to 128MB RAM, but the company is looking to expand the capacity to handle devices with more than 4GB of RAM by October 2021.
EMUI 11
Also announced at HDC 2.0 Together 2020 was the new EMUI 11. The new firmware will feature a more streamlined and clean UI, updated security features, the addition of Always-On Display (AOD) feature, MeeTime, as well as screen sharing support for up to three devices.
EMUI 11 will also add support for erasing an image’s data before being shared, as well as a new memo feature with encryption to keep your notes private.
As for compatible devices, EMUI 11 beta will be offered to 10 devices:
- Huawei P40
- Huawei P40 Pro
- Huawei P40+
- Huawei Mate 30
- Huawei Mate 30 5G
- Huawei Mate 30 Pro
- Huawei Mate 30 Pro 5G
- Huawei Mate 30 RS
- Huawei MatePad Pro
- Huawei MatePad Pro 5G
Apart from these devices listed above, Huawei will also be offering the Beta update program to Honor 30, Honor V30, and Nova 7 series. But, no official date has been mentioned yet.