Since the official launch of the Hongmeng project, there have been various voices, some optimistic about it, believing that the emergence of Hongmeng will become a framework and platform for intelligent terminal device operating systems, promoting the prosperity and development of the Internet of Everything industry; there are also people who are pessimistic. I feel that Hongmeng cannot develop, and I even think that Hongmeng is just a reskin and shell of Android.
So what is the reality? What is the relationship between Hongmeng and Android?
1. The development history of operating systems. The era of Internet of Everything requires a brand new operating system
The development of the entire operating system has roughly gone through three eras:
** (1) PC era: ** Mainly based on computers, the number of users increased from 1 billion in 1970 to 3 billion in 1990. This era gave birth to operating systems such as Windows, Linux, and MacOS. Due to the widespread deployment of the Windows operating system, Microsoft became the world's most valuable company in the 1990s.
**(2) Mobile Internet era: **With the popularity of smartphones, operating systems have officially entered the mobile Internet era. Apple launched the IOS operating system, supporting Apple to become the technology company with the highest market value in the world; Google acquired Android in 2005 The company has continued to invest in R&D and version iterations. Today, the Android operating system has become the most widely distributed mobile smart operating system in the world.
**(3) The era of Internet of Everything:** As more and more devices are connected to the Internet, it is difficult for a single operating system to adapt to the needs of diverse smart terminals and various complex application scenarios. Major companies such as Google and Huawei have entered the field of IoT operating systems and continue to increase investment in this area.
Google began developing the Fuchsia operating system based on the Zircon microkernel in 2016, which can replace Android designed for mobile devices and is planned to be used in scenarios with different computing power and needs such as personal mobile devices and IoT devices.
Huawei released the IoT-based HarmonyOS in 2019, and then officially released the open source version, OpenHarmony, in 2020, which is oriented to all scenarios and full connections, and is suitable for all types of smart devices.
2. Development history of Hongmeng
In 2012, Huawei President Ren Zhengfei said: "Huawei's terminal operating system is based on strategic considerations." The concept of Hongmeng operating system appeared in the public eye for the first time.
In May 2016, Hongmeng officially established a project within Huawei's software department and began investing in research and development.
On August 9, 2019, Huawei officially released HarmonyOS 1.0, which was the first to be deployed on smart screens.
On September 10, 2020, Huawei released HarmonyOS 2.0 at the HDC conference. This version mainly includes major improvements in three aspects: distributed soft bus, distributed data management and distributed security.
In June of the same year, the Open Atomic Open Source Foundation, led by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, was formally established. It was also the first open source software foundation in China. Huawei open sourced some of the basic capabilities in HarmonyOS 2.0 and donated them to the Open Atom Open Source Foundation, officially establishing the OpenHarmony open source project.
In April 2023, OpenHarmony released version 3.2Release, fully supporting complex standard screen devices.
In addition, in June 2023, OpenHarmony released version 4.0Beta, ArkUI further improved component capabilities and effects, and provided the first batch of API Level 10 interfaces. The official 4.0Release version is expected to be released in September 2023 or 2024.
3. The relationship between Hongmeng, HarmonyOS and OpenHarmony
In a sense, Hongmeng includes HarmonyOS and OpenHarmony.
In May 2016, Huawei's Consumer BG Software Department began to develop a project to develop "distributed operating system version 1.0", which is the prototype of the Hongmeng system.
Taking into account the current number of Huawei devices and the imperfect software ecosystem of the Hongmeng system in the early stage, Huawei's Hongmeng system is technically compatible with Android applications and integrates Huawei's own capabilities, including HMS, etc., forming a system that can be used on Huawei mobile phones, smart screens, The operating system running on tablets and other devices, namely HarmonyOS, is not open source.
With the layout of Huawei's open source strategy, in order to ensure that the Hongmeng system has a good ecosystem and attract more co-construction participation, Huawei has open sourced some of the basic capabilities of the Hongmeng system. The open source part is OpenHarmony. This part is a Huawei self-developed project and is not compatible with the Android ecosystem.
Therefore, OpenHarmony generally refers to the open source Harmony, and HarmonyOS refers to Huawei's closed source Harmony. Both use the ArkUI development framework in their application frameworks, and are compatible with each other in application development.
As the OpenHarmony ecosystem improves, OpenHarmony will gradually replace HarmonyOS and eventually form a unified open source Harmony ecosystem.
4. Is Hongmeng an Android shell?
As mentioned earlier, HarmonyOS, or HarmonyOS, is technically compatible with Android applications in order to solve the problem of imperfect software ecology and insufficient applications in the early stage. But the fact that HarmonyOS can run Android applications does not mean that HarmonyOS is an Android shell .
We can use a tree as a category. Hongmeng’s technical base is based on OpenHarmony, which is the root and trunk of the Hongmeng tree.
In order for the Hongmeng tree to grow Hongmeng fruits, it needs soil and a certain amount of time to cultivate. But before that, we need fruits that can be eaten immediately (a large number of applications), what should we do?
Therefore, Huawei used grafting technology to graft some branches of Android on the Hongmeng tree, so that Android fruits (supporting Android applications) can grow on the Hongmeng tree.
However, when we look back, the root and trunk of the Hongmeng tree are OpenHarmony, and the fruits of Hongmeng are gradually growing on it. Although it now uses grafting technology to grow Android fruits on some branches, it cannot be said that this tree is Android .
It is reported that Huawei will release the HarmonyOS NEXT version next year, which will cut off all Android branches and will no longer be technically compatible with Android.
By then, we can see that the Hongmeng Tree will bear fruit!
5.Comparison between OpenHarmony and Android
Android is a free and open source operating system based on the Linux kernel (excluding GNU components). It is mainly used in mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets. It is led and developed by the American Google Company and the Open Handset Alliance.
At the beginning of the system architecture design, OpenHarmony was not positioned as a substitute for Android. OpenHarmony's goal was to build a distributed operating system for the Internet of Everything era, which is not on the same track as Android.
The two are relatively similar in system architecture design, but OpenHarmony adds distributed related capabilities to the traditional system architecture, as shown in the figure.
It can be seen that OpenHarmony has its own set of architectural design and implementation, which is different from Android in terms of development language, runtime, application framework, etc. The two are completely different operating systems.
(1) Kernel comparison
Android: Based on the Linux kernel, program security, network protocols, memory management, process management, and drivers are all provided by the Linux kernel. In addition, Android Runtime (ART) relies on the Linux kernel to perform underlying functions, including threads and low-level memory management.
OpenHarmony: uses a multi-core design to support the selection of appropriate OS kernels for different resource-constrained devices. Kernel Abstract Layer (KAL, Kernel Abstract Layer) provides basic kernel capabilities to the upper layer by shielding multi-core differences, including process/thread management, memory management, file system, network management and peripheral management, etc.
(2) Runtime comparison
Android Runtime (ART) is a managed runtime used by applications and some system services on Android. ART and its predecessor Dalvik were originally built specifically for Android projects. ART executes as a runtime Dalvik executable and follows the Dex bytecode specification.
Ark eTS runtime is the default ArkTS language runtime on OpenHarmony. It provides a complete C++ interactive ArkTS NAPI and various high-performance garbage collectors, driving OpenHarmony applications in the Internet of Everything era.