Ever since reports surfaced that Huawei was working on its own operating system called Harmony OS (also known as HongMeng OS), rumors swirled that the company would eventually replace Android with it. Huawei eventually refuted that the OS wasn't intended for smartphones. Of course, this was before the Huawei ban was issued by the Trump Administration. Huawei officially announced it last August.

A new report from MyDrivers cited an interview with Wang Chenglu, Head of Software Development at Huawei Consumer Business Group. In this interview, the question of how EMUI 11 and HongMeng OS was brought up to which the Huawei exec explained that EMUI 11 uses the same framework as HongMeng, as well as system scheduler “and other changes”.





This means that the latest version of EMUI based on Android 11 is already a transitional release that prepares devices and consumers to adopt the first public release of HongMeng OS. HongMeng OS 2.0 beta will first arrive on TVs, cars, watches, while mobile devices that launch with EMUI 11 will be the first to receive HongMeng OS 2.0 OTA.


Based on a timeline from earlier this month, the first batch of phones to get Harmony/HongMeng OS are those powered by the Kirin 9000 like the Huawei Mate 40 lineup, then the Kirin 990 5G, and eventually the entry-level Kirin 810 devices. You can find that report here.

First batch Kirin 9000
Second batch Kirin 990 5G
Third batch Kirin 990 4G (partial), 985, 820 (partial)
Fourth batch Kirin 980, 990 4G (partial), 820 (partial)
Final batch Kirin 810, 710 (partial)

I hope their new os won't make their device boring.