Nowadays, we are using a variety of smart devices, such as mobile phones, PCs, tablets, smartwatches, etc., all of which have their own operating systems. Even products under the same brand will have a system specially customized for them. Like Apple:
Although Apple does a good job of interacting with its own brand devices, it still needs a lot of manual work to develop and maintain the different systems. From a developer’s point of view, they need to adjust different frameworks and UIs for different platforms. It needs the team to spend more time on it.
During use, the system between different devices needs to judge your operation, and then execute according to different platforms and different operations via different program applications. Apple products, it does a great job of interoperability between their own products, but it can’t support interaction with Android devices or Windows devices.
This is why people who used Apple phones in the early days would have to work hard to copy photos to their computers. Even this is the first time many Apple mobile phone users need to learn a Lesson “How to copy photos to your computer.”
What does the Harmony OS Solve？
For the Android system equipment, in addition to the fragmentation of the system, there is no unified standard between different vendors, coupled with a mess of third-party apps, as a result, the Android devices have a poor user experience. If it wants to get the perfect fit between the Android devices, and applications, it needs more work than Apple. This is also why so many games or applications upload to the Apple store first, relatively speaking, The Apple system is easier to maintain.
Of course, the Android system is better than before, but the people who have a little bit of development experience will know that if you modify an others program, which has been maintained by different people at a different stage, there will be a lot of garbage codes inside.
Although these garbage codes seem useless, they may be connected to another instruction. So if you delete it, it will cause a chain reaction, and even cause the system to crash. Therefore, it is safer to add the function you want to the original code instead of changing the original code.
However, these methods will cause some problems. Let us give an example:
You want to go to the park, it may just need a 10-minute distance. However, when you go out, you find there are 10 roads in front of you. Not every road can reach the park, no everyone will just spend 10 minutes, none may need 15 minutes, and one may need 30 minutes.
This is the terrible effect of garbage code. Now Android is the case. Everyone knows that there is a garbage code. It will affect the efficiency of operation, but no one dares to move, or no one will move for no one can hold the risk of a system crash.
How does the Harmony OS Work？
Huawei’s Harmony OS proposes the concept of a “microkernel”. In fact, this new Google system Fuchsia OS is a microkernel system. They hope to replace the current situation of Android to solve the garbage code problem.
The biggest benefit of this “microkernel” system is that it allows developers to submit their applications and adapt to all hardware at the most convenient and fastest speed. This is also a great benefit for consumers, we can update them in the first place. All the smart devices are similar to Apple’s annual version of the system update. Almost all users in the world can update at the same time.
Harmony OS, a micro-kernel-based, full-distribution distributed OS.
The phrase “micro-kernel-based full-distribution distributed OS” is the key point. It is not a system specially prepared for individual devices. It is a platform-based system that can distribute resources and functions through the central network. All functions can be used independently, flexibly, and unified.
The Structure of Harmony OS
Let’s take a look at the overall structure of Harmony OS. In fact, it still retains the Linux kernel, so that it can be directly compatible with Android applications. In the future, Huawei may definitely combine the major mainstream manufacturers to customize the proprietary APP that belongs to Harmony OS for this is the best way to play its performance.
When those applications developed by “Ark Compiler” are launched, they can exert at least 80% of their strength. When the Harmony OS ecology is established completely, it can play close to 100% strength.
In order to realize it as soon as possible, Huawei spares a lot of effort into it. Huawei even provides developers with a very comfortable portable environment. Many basic operations can be completely designed by the drag-n-drop module. Modular programming is a future trend.
It allows you to develop once and adapt all the devices equipped with Hongmeng OS. This is the dream of countless Android developers.
The Advantage of Harmony OS
Let’s take a closer look at the Harmony OS. The biggest difference from the normal system is that it does not directly execute everything at the beginning of running the program. Instead, it first judges what device you are, and then executes directly to the specified channel. This system is not customized for a certain device, whether you are a TV, a computer, or a mobile phone, they all use the same system.
The advantage of this is that every time you need to maintain the system, you only need to upgrade the first layer of things, the bottom layer needn’t move.
In addition to the independence of the device, it will make the hardware’s own functions become things that the system can deploy, such as the camera on the phone, which can even be used by TV or watched through inter-system scheduling because they use the same system. So they have the ability to communicate with each other.
Like the movie “Speed & Passion”, the sky-eye system in it is actually deploying all the IP cameras around to get the picture, so as to accurately track the target person. Although Harmony OS is not so advanced, it is already an Embryonic form.
Another advantage is that it can give you different performances depending on what you are doing, just like our current smart router. If you are playing a game, it may guarantee that you will upgrade the system while you are playing the game, but it will not affect your internet speed; if you are watching a video, in this scenario where there is almost no performance. It may help you to completely kill or self-test in the background. This optimization ability can be done in the current mobile phone.
Will the Harmony OS Have Security Guarantees？
This function is actually invisible to you, but you can also find it indirectly from other places, such as less electricity, faster opening, no need to clean up the cache…
As far as system security is concerned, in my opinion, the micro-kernel system of the Harmony system is very small and the amount of code is not large, so it can use deeper security level measures.
In addition, it doesn’t have root authority, which means that it will not provide core authority to any third-party applications or systems. It is one of the maximum-security guarantees.
Still, Harmony is not a mobile phone system to replace Android but rather is designed to work on devices from tablets to phones, smartwatches to cars, and much else besides.
It‘s awesome, right? Let’s look forward to more development of HUAWEI HARMONY OS!