As planned, Huawei has launched the first public beta of HarmonyOS 2.0 for mobile, the operating system that the company has been developing for some time as an alternative to Android and that was previously also known as HongmengOS.
Until now, HarmonyOS had made its appearance on televisions and smart devices like routers, but not on smartphones. This first beta is intended for application developers and is available for various Huawei P40 and Huawei Mate 30.
HarmonyOS finally reaches mobile phones
Huawei officially announced HarmonyOS in August 2019 as an operating system con microkernel and versatile: from televisions to routers, household appliances, cars, smart watches and, of course, mobile phones. However, we knew that HarmonyOS wouldn’t be mobile-ready until later in a second phase.
The phones with HarmonyOS pre-installed will not arrive until next year, but what is ready is already the first beta of HarmonyOS for mobile, aimed at application developers, in a similar way to how Google first releases the Developer Preview of each new version of Android.
Registration is open for this beta through this website (in Chinese) and it is accessible in two ways: with an emulator in DevEco Studio’s own IDE or by installing the ROM on a compatible device. The list of devices is quite limited, being only the Chinese version of these terminals:
The exact models that can install the ROM with HarmonyOS 2.0 beta That is, it is available for five Huawei phones and tablets: Huawei P40, Huawei P40 Pro, Huawei Mate 30, Huawei Mate30 Pro and Huawei MatePad Pro that have the model name and version of the system shown in the table above.
To receive the OTA, it is necessary to register in the beta and have the application approved. Then, in a process of 1 or 2 days it should get the update via OTA. It is possible to downgrade from HarmonyOS 2.0 to EMUI 11, although all application data will be lost along the way.
More information | Huawei