Huawei's new Android competitor officially launches with over 15,000 apps

After being cut off from the US market and slowly losing Android support, Shenzhen, China-based Huawei built its proprietary HarmonyOS. The operating system, which was first revealed back in 2019, was essentially an Android fork and supported Android apps.

Subsequently, in 2023, Huawei unveiled HarmonyOS NEXT, an operating system completely devoid of Android and AOSP code that only supports the HarmonyOS kernel and HarmonyOS applications. The OS, at the time, was limited to internal testing and public developers. Fast-forward to this year, and the proprietary OS was tipped to be unveiled in late September. After a slight delay, the OS did make its way to certain Huawei devices as a public beta on October 8.

Now, the new OS has officially been announced by Huawei, and it is available to try out on several devices. These include:

Other Huawei devices, including the likes of the Nova Flip, Nova 13 and 12 series, MatePad Pro 12.2-inch, MatePad Air 12-inch, and others will receive the update in 2025. According to an AndroidHeadlines report, the OS supports over 15,000 native apps, which the company asserts will meet 99.9% of consumer needs.

HarmonyOS NEXT is currently limited to China, but wider availability is expected

The Chinese manufacturer's chairperson, Xu Zhijun, has previously confirmed that HarmonyOS will expand to other countries, with it reportedly having the potential to be the world's third OS option, following Google's Android and Apple's iOS. The expansion will be necessary if the manufacturer aims to garner any sense of global appeal.

Here's what we know about the OS so far. AI is "deeply integrated" within the system, with features like Voice Repair (likely to enhance voices in recorded audio), on-screen context, and an AI-powered Xiaoyi assistant. While not mentioned, it is likely that the OS will use AI to enhance other features and apps that power photography and productivity.

Elsewhere, on-screen elements look different from the traditional HarmonyOS experience. For example, the lock screen appears to have been redesigned with an iOS-esque look to it, complete with a tool that automatically relocates on-screen widgets to complement your wallpaper.

A timeline for when we'll be able to get our hands on HarmonyOS NEXT is currently unclear, though what is clear is that the OS' success depends entirely on Huawei being able to attract developers to port their applications over to the platform — and eventually rolling the OS out globally.