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by ladyanita22 1844 days ago
You're the one confused. The RT kernel, the one that fits in 128kb, is Openharmony, and it is a simple RT os without anything special.

Harmony OS, this harmony OS, the one that's actually powerful and what you really care about, is just an Android reskin.

1 comments

A lot of this "stuff" comes from the Ars Technica article:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/02/harmonyos-hands-on-h...

Huawei’s HarmonyOS: “Fake it till you make it” meets OS development

While it is true that Huawei did officially respond to the Ars Technica article, one of their developers did a detailed walkthru of the article trying settle some of the misunderstandings.

https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV12X4y1N7bd

It is in English but has a Chinese title which google hilariously translates into:

See the BBC again? The technology media from the West can't avoid the vulgarity. Seeing them embarrassing and black Hongmeng can't stand it, Brother Zhao refuted it.

Enjoy.

I actually watched the full video (at 1× speed, because Bilibili has mislabeled the app download button as 倍速.) He has some criticisms of the Ars Technica article that I agree with. However, those aren't really relevant to the current thread.

He confirms that the developer beta reviewed in the article is running Linux on ARM with all pieces of Android present, modulo Google Mobile Services replaced by Huawei Mobile Services. He then criticizes the article for concluding that it's just Android without trying out any HarmonyOS-specific features, but doesn't demonstrate them himself. To borrow his analogy, if Android is English and HarmonyOS is Chinese, why does he speak English the whole time? (And why so slowly?)

The video would've been much better if he'd booted up an emulator himself to show what was missing from the Ars Technica article.

He did make references to API documentation on how to transfer a window from one device to another. It's too bad he didn't demonstrate it. I would love to see a follow up demonstration.

EDIT: apparently there is a demonstration video here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27368995

The guy's channel is all technical videos on HarmonyOS on phones and iot-devices:

https://space.bilibili.com/455592866

Unfortunately, the video I linked to appears to be the only one in English.

He didn't demonstrate it because there was nothing to show. Harmony is Android.
Thank you for linking to the response video. I was wondering what was up with the Ars Technica review. This response has cleared some things up.