Arstechnica columnist succeeded Participate in the HarmonyOS 2.0 SDK Preview Program, developed by Huawei as an alternative to Android. Huawei has stated that HarmonyOS is a separate project, completely different from Android and iOS, but in fact what is proposed for testing in the emulator from the SDK is a clone of Android 10, which coincides in interface elements, applications and service services. The system uses the “EMUI” shell, which is also installed in Huawei devices based on Android. The company claims to use the “EMUI” port for HarmonyOS, but all other components are also indistinguishable from Android.
The article states that the HarmonyOS IoT revision code published in the OpenHarmony repository does not in any way overlap with what is offered in the emulator HarmonyOS 2.0. In the first case, is based on its own microkernel LiteOS, and in the case of HarmonyOS 2.0 offers the system environment Android 10 based on the Linux kernel and a set of typical Android applications. The visible differences boil down to the rebranding.
In the system information dialog, the platform is listed as version 10, which resembles Android 10, not HarmonyOS 2. Third-party applications displaying system information identify the environment as “Android 10 Q”. Moreover, the IDE offered in the SDK is identical in interface and working methods to Android Studio and is also based on the Jetbrains IntelliJ IDE and uses the Gradle build system.
