Huawei's Android Replacement OS Will Launch in June, Company Exec Says (techradar.com) 72
Huawei's home-grown operating system -- codenamed HongMeng -- that's set to replace Android once the Huawei ban from Google comes into full effect, will be commercially rolled out next month, a Middle East head for the firm revealed exclusively to TechRadar Middle East. From a report: On May 20, Google announced that it would partially cut off Huawei devices from its Android operating system but was given an extension till August 19 by the US White House. "Huawei knew this was coming and was preparing. The OS was ready in January 2018 and this was our 'Plan B'," said Alaa Elshimy, Managing Director and Vice President of Huawei Enterprise Business Group Middle East. "We did not want to bring the OS to the market as we had a strong relationship with Google and others and did not want to ruin the relationship. Now, we are rolling it out next month."
Actual name (Score:2)
It will be called Hawndroid.
Jokes about chinese forks of android aside, the actual name will be Hongmeng [wikipedia.org].
Although, ideally, I'd love to see them using Sailfish OS.
+1, would love that.
(But probably not going to happens. Gives way to much control over the smartphone to end-users.)
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Closed source, closed hardware. closed OS... (Score:5, Interesting)
Huawei locked all bootloaders and actively going after stuff that unlocks them. Combine this with a likely closed source OS that has an unknown pedigree. Sounds like something to run away from.
The ironic thing is that if Huawei went with AOSP, allowed unlocking of bootloaders, supported LineageOS, and worked on positioning for privacy, people would beat down the door importing Huawei devices into the US, and when sanctions are lifted, Huawei would have a dedicated and devoted base of xda-developers. However, they seem to be going down a different road... one that might work for China, but definitely not many other places.
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Just look at other highly concerning platforms like facebook. Not exactly the same as a phone, sure, but even all the recent controversies has not driven enough people away from selling themselves to Zuckerberg.
I predict many, many returns... (Score:3)
If their product is (subjectively) priced low enough people will probably still go for it.
Right up until they discover that there's no Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or SnapChat app, let alone Minecraft, Angry Birds or Candy Crush...
Then they'll be right back to the vendor, demanding their refund.
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Are all of them banning Huawei as well?
No, although that might happen in the near future if Trump has the concept of software explained to him sufficiently clearly.
The point is that either the OS is Android-compatible or it's not. Either way, it still needs a source of apps, and either way they can't use Google one.
Now, Huawei might bring out the wheel-barrows full of cash, er, incentive for 3rd party developers to produce compliant versions of their apps or to put the Android versions in a Huawei app store, but I can't see many major American c
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Angry Birds is made by a Finnish company.
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Like hell it's off-topic. I was just mentioning not every single popular app is made in the the USA.
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Right up until they discover that there's no Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or SnapChat app, let alone Minecraft, Angry Birds or Candy Crush...
You're thinking too much like an American, Briton or European there. In China they don't use those apps, they use local home grown super apps like WeChat that do everything in one app, including ride hailing, mobile payments, chats, social media, messaging etc. There is a huge market in China, India and other lower income nations for a cheap and reliable phone with decent build quality and good bundled apps. Huawei will just bundle in one of the Chinese super apps along with their standard Huawei OS custom
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Huawei already had many of the components for the OS built on top of AOSP anyway, since you can't use Android in China due to Google services being blocked. So they already had their own app store, their own mapping services, their own cloud storage, their own core apps.
The amount of work to remove the last few Google bits and then translate what they had into English probably wasn't as much as some people imagine.
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I wish any of that were true.
+1
If there were that much interest in open devices, Google Pixels and the unlockable versions of Motorola's devices would fly off the shelves. The truth is that the segment that cares about openness is very small.
Re:Closed source, closed hardware. closed OS... (Score:4, Interesting)
Their OS is almost certainly based on AOSP and so will be open source to a similar extent to Android.
They may start unlocking bootloaders again. The motivation for locking was to prevent phones being bought cheaper in China, imported to the US on the grey market and reflashed with US software.
TFA mentions WiFi, which could get very interesting. Huawei has a lot of patents on wireless tech and is innovating fast. If they are cut off from the WiFi Alliance it could hold WiFi back, both because of less innovation and because it will have to keep avoiding Huawei patents.
In fact one of the possible retaliations the Chinese could do would be to ban Chinese companies from licencing their patents to US ones, meaning US ones couldn't make any 5G or high end WiFi equipment any more without violating them.
Re:AOSP is junk. IT'S TOTAL JUNK. (Score:5, Informative)
You guys throw "AOSP" around like it means something, but it just shows that you've never done anything with it.
AOSP has dramatically improved in the last year. It used to be junk because no one ever used it directly; OEMs actually used the partner branches provided by Google, plus their own changes, and lots of changes flowed into AOSP which had only been tested on other branches. So AOSP contained an untested mishmash.
Project Treble and its follow-on projects have changed this, and AOSP actually gets regular testing now. While I wouldn't guarantee that any random AOSP build will work, the odds are hugely better than in the past.
FWIW, my team primarily works directly on AOSP. We build and run AOSP master on our test devices (Pixel 3s, mostly). It usually isn't broken, though I wouldn't use it on my daily driver without a lot of testing.
In any case, Huawei absolutely has the capability to take AOSP snapshots, stabilize them, and release them as functional builds.
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I thought Wi-Fi patents were still held by Australia? Are there Chinese specific patents for Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax)?
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Indeed there are. The basic tech was invented in Australia but all the newer stuff includes patented ideas from multiple companies. Especially the new standards operating at much higher frequencies, similar to 5G.
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I doubt this actually. It might still have a Linux kernel, but I'm willing to bet they'll be dropping most of the Android legacy stuff under it. They talk about how apps will need to be recompiled from Android, so they probably implement most of the Android API, but I doubt it will be an ASOP fork.
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I think what you mean is "Huawei is a foreign owned corporation, so the US will be quite willing to invalidate their patents.".
To say that they are criminal means that they have been convicted in court of a crime. Probably implicitly a felony. If this is true, one would believe it were widely known and publicized. Not to mention the fact that many US companies have been convicted of crimes without suffering that kind of penalty.
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TFA mentions WiFi, which could get very interesting. Huawei has a lot of patents on wireless tech and is innovating fast. If they are cut off from the WiFi Alliance it could hold WiFi back, both because of less innovation and because it will have to keep avoiding Huawei patents..
This is wrong, but a common misconception.
What the Wi-Fi alliance owns in the the name, WiFi. If you want to say you support "Wi-Fi", then you must get a membership, then pay for certification.
They are not able to stop you from using the 802.11 specs. You just can't call it wifi. You can say you support 802.11ac Wireless internet for example.
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Ironically, having a US company replace Huawei's OS with a supported LineageOS offshoot (or partnering with a US company to do that), would solve the security issues that are driving this. OnePlus started out more or less that way, and only went to their own OS once Cyanogen Corp screwed them over.
But if the real issue is potential backdoors into the Huawei OS, then not using the Huawei OS - but still including all the Google stuff, ought to solve the problem. Except that who knows what the real problem i
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Closed source/hardware/OS/... like Apple. And like Apple, I'll never buy it.
China didn't want unlocked bootloaders. (Score:1)
Huawei had them until just a few years ago. I have a U8150 that had one for instance. Easiest phone I ever reflashed. Also one of the first affordable android phones (It cost me 180 at a time anything comparable memory-wise was 250+, although it had no 3d acceleration which kept it from upgrading past android 4.0.4).
Huawei had actually been a pretty good Android citizen compared to Samsung, HTC, Motorola, etc. The only company who has been similarly friendly that I have found was LG, and they splash a big '
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Xiaomi is one of the better-supported brands by Lineageos by being unlock friendly.
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Huawei locked all bootloaders and actively going after stuff that unlocks them. Combine this with a likely closed source OS that has an unknown pedigree. Sounds like something to run away from.
I completely agree!
The ironic thing is that if Huawei went with AOSP, allowed unlocking of bootloaders, supported LineageOS, and worked on positioning for privacy, people would beat down the door importing Huawei devices into the US, and when sanctions are lifted, Huawei would have a dedicated and devoted base of xda-developers.
I agree with this, as well. I'm just not sure exactly how big this demgraphic is and whether or not it would come close to moving the needle in terms of adoption.
I think that I agree with the Anonymous reply to your post -- if things are priced "right" then they will get market share. This is really sad, but I believe that it's the case. Like Anonymous said, we have examples of online communities like Facebook and other hardware/os vendors (iPhone/iOS) where having closed source, propriet
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Attention, developers... (Score:1)
Re:Attention, developers... (Score:4, Interesting)
Who will be first with a "pull my finger" app?
Will any US developers be permitted to post apps on the Huawei app store . . . ?
Or will they be charged with treason, and rooming with Assange for that?
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My hFart app is ready to post to Huawei app store.
Hunandroid! (Score:1)
With 100% binary compatibility.
I trust Huawei more than Google... (Score:1)
Am I the only one? They make their money from their products, not from selling their users.
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You shouldn't trust Huawei more than Google unless you trust the Chinese government more than the US government. There are arguments that there are situations where that is appropriate, but there are also lots of situations where it isn't.
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To a large degree the Chinese already have a huge application and web services portfolio. The thing is it is mostly locked into their language.
Could use some options (Score:1)
This was the obvious result of the Huawei bans. I just hope they produce something nice that is a real alternative to Android. The Google hegemony could use some alternatives.
Sailfish seemed like a nice alternative but it does not seem to be adopted by any. Including Huawei. Tizen seems to have been buried somewhere.