Huawei's alternative OS to Android set to roll out as early as fall | Hacker News Reader

Huawei's alternative OS to Android set to roll out as early as fall

androidpolice.com

51 pointsoctosphere64 comments

> It will work with Android apps and web apps as well

I guess it is fair to assume at this point that they based it on the OSS part of Android ?

Let's see if they manage to solve the Play Service pickle also. A lot of application assume you have them, I don't know if a lot of dev' are going to repackage their app "play-service" free for one vendor (wouldn't be surprising for popular app tho').

It could also be Chrome OS…

> em, I don't know if a lot of dev' are going to repackage their app "play-service"

A lot of devs will repackage their apps if it means reaching a market, what 10x the size of the United States (Europe and Asia) ?

Except it will just be huawei for now. We are talking about just one vendor, not the whole Asian/European market.

Android was just Google for 3 years and I imagine Huawei will be moving much faster. If they see the value in the OS (as opposed to Apple's HW strategy) it can have a Android-sized market share rather than an iOS-sized one which is significant outside our bubbles.

How viable is it for someone outside China to sell apps in China?

I got the impression that it is pretty difficult.

There are many who create non-play builds of their apps, notably for the Amazon Fire app store. There's also the open source microG project, that can probably be leveraged.

> I don't know if a lot of dev' are going to repackage their app "play-service" free

Don't many already for Amazon's store? Or does Amazon's store usually get used along-side Google's Play Store and/or have some sort of compatibility shim?

> for one vendor (wouldn't be surprising for popular app tho').

Huawei is a reasonably significant manufacturer though, and other Chinese manufacturers may get on-board (even if they don't have to now, as a precautionary measure in case that changes) and if they end up offering handsets cheaper with the new OS than Android people might buy them in significant numbers.

And if it is easy to package for this new OS as well as Android, i.e. there are minimal or no changes needed to the main app code just extra steps in the build process, devs might support it because the effort is small so why lock yourself out of a market?

They may also just stop using Play specific things, if losing what-ever benefit they offer is deemed less hassle than maintaining the extra build.

> Let's see if they manage to solve the Play Service pickle also. A lot of application assume you have them [...]

What are those even good for? In the end a smartphone is a little computer running some kind of Linux and we should be able to have a standard cron to deal with recurring tasks. Not some fancy service to do things I don't want it to do. This whole App ecosystem is going really wild and not for the best, I think.

I really hope this happens and that it's not just an ASOP fork and is successful outside of China. It'd be great to have a real, third, alternative operating system that has major support. I'm sick of both Android and eyeProducts.

KDE Plasma is supported on barely anything. PostmarketOS is doing amazing stuff; very commendable -- but we still don't have usable OSS drivers for any mobile radios. I honestly liked Microsoft's mobile offering and wish they didn't totally screw that up. HP has essentially killed off Palm/WebOS.

Anyone who's making a real attempt at a 3rd major mobile OS is commendable.

As far as I know, it's a Linux fork[0], and capable to run Android app.

More information can be found using keyword "Hongmeng OS".

[0] https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%B8%BF%E8%92%99 (No English version)

I have used Sailfish OS on a smartphone and it's awesome so far. I love it.

Russian govt is using it in their offices. I hope more countries seek out alternative OSes.

The Librem OS looks killer too:

https://shop.puri.sm/shop/librem-5/

https://itsfoss.com/librem-linux-phone/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librem

Sailfish seems to be limited to the EU. It's almost impossible to find their phones on the US eBay (and it seems like they might not work on our LTE networks either .. same with the Fairphone)

Can't you just but a Sony Xperia XA2. Then use a VPN service from Europe and purchase a license. It should not be too difficult, not?

I miss blackberry's last attempt. My Q5 could sideload most of the android apps I needed that weren't available for blackberry. It was a perfect world.

A fully open source phone OS would be very nice, one can hope.

As usual, I am sure we will just get another dose of vendor lock-in.

> an Android app recompiled for Huawei's OS is said to perform 60% faster.

I'll believe it when I see it.

I'm not sure if I'd even notice if a single app performed faster at this point. Outside of games (of which the most popular ones are built on 2013-era game engines), most apps people use are extremely utilitarian and don't bog down in this era of octa-core processors and 4GB RAM.

Hell if they could get discord performing better on my pixel 3 I'd be happy.

>“It will work with Android apps and web apps as well — an Android app recompiled for Huawei's OS is said to perform 60% faster.”

So they’ve been sitting on this magical OS that somehow is compatible yet way faster than Android... that also runs everywhere? Why haven’t they released it then until now?

Because Google wouldn't allow them to put official Google apps on it. They only allow them on licensed instances of Android itself. And that's still an important market.

Yep, it would have kicked them out of Google's tightly controlled and terribly named "Open Handset Alliance."

Samsung couldn't even include a secondary location provider if they wanted to stay in the OHA!

https://www.gizmochina.com/2019/04/15/here-are-the-cool-feat...

> Huawei is known for innovations and the new EMUI 9.1 is stuffed with several new features worthy of note. Among them, the most striking is Huawei’s new self-developed system performance innovation tool – EROFS (Super File System) and Ark compiler.

> The Ark Compiler brings support for architecture level optimizations resulting in significant performance improvements. It will make the Android system more responsive and robust against different actions. Yu reveals that the new compiler can improve system fluency by 24%, system response by 44% and enhance operations of third-party apps by 60%. It will further strengthen multitasking by optimizing several processes and resulting in better speed and performance. Improved battery performance, faster execution speeds and compatibility across all new Android devices term Ark as the best alternative for ART (Android Runtime).

Tldr - they built an alternative to Dalvik and ART that's quicker, and they were going to release it for Android even if all this didn't happen.

I worked for years with numerous Huawei platform in telecom industry. I can assure you this will be a crap.

Has little chance of success outside of China UNLESS it's open source and the appstore and update infrastructure is outside of China for non-Chinese customers.

Yeah, no one would ever use this unless they could audit it. Huawei's security concerns are real.

Let's see this strategy has been tried for about 7 years now..is it working yet? Just new device oem trying it nothing more rinse repeat

If AOSP is legally controlled by Google, despite being open-source, how can Hauwei legally sell a phone in the US derived from AOSP without violating the import ban?

Does the import ban not include free software? That seems like an oversight that would be quickly and easily corrected.

If you put restrictions on free software, isn't it then by definition non-free?

You can violate things like ITAR with open source, and the ITAR rules will take precedence.

There are a lot of ways you can restrict FOSS software - even fully FLOSS DOD codes are not supposed to be obtainable from places like Iran and North Korea.

Checking up on the "Crypto Wars," my reading export regulations led to a surprise: only a few types of crypto were re-classified from a munition to something with no restrictions. High-assurance security (EAL6/7) and customized security, among other things, were still munitions. Undoubtedly, they left that in there in case they wanted to restrict availability of high-security products in a future where they became effective for foreign users. The other thing it implied is that DOD (esp NSA) knew the cryptosystems they were approving would be bypassable in most cases.

That is scary. But what gives a certain government (in this case the US) the right* to say code that has been contributed by global citizens should no longer be accessible to certain people (possible including those who contributed in the first place?)

Isn't something that is restricted against the following statement from "The Free Software Definition"[1]:

> “Free software” means software that respects users' freedom and community. Roughly, it means that the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. Thus, “free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer”. We sometimes call it “libre software,” borrowing the French or Spanish word for “free” as in freedom, to show we do not mean the software is gratis.

> We campaign for these freedoms because everyone deserves them. With these freedoms, the users (both individually and collectively) control the program and what it does for them. When users don't control the program, we call it a “nonfree” or “proprietary” program. The nonfree program controls the users, and the developer controls the program; this makes the program an instrument of unjust power.

... the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software - That sentence in particular seems to imply that if you restrict it, something can still be open source (OSS), but no longer free/libre (FLOSS). So if the DoD claims to have FLOSS code that cannot be used in certain cases, by definition it should be described as OSS, not FLOSS.

[1](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html)

> should no longer be accessible to certain people

That's hard to enforce, but it's easier to restrict what those other parties can do with the code once they have it, e.g., ban their business from your country.

Google has no contractual way to prevent someone from using software released under a fully open license. Therefore the US gov has no way of forcing Google to do something they simply can't do.

Yes, however they can refuse Hauwei permission to sell the phones in the US.

Hauwei phones cannot be sold in the u.s. if I am not mistaken.

Anyway Google cannot prevent them from using Asop.

Funny, because for a long time Tizen was supposedly Samsung's ace in the hole to create an Android alternative. It hasn't worked out very well, but Huawei could be better at software than Samsung is.

In all honesty an excuse my french, if they manage not to turn all this in a shìtshow of epic proportions for their customers it would be quite an achievement I think.

So they've been banned from using Google proprietary apps and ARM cooperation and in turn they are forking the entire open source operating system?

Is this just going to be an ASOP fork?

If they have FLOSS replacements for Play Services, this could be an exciting development.

Will it work without ARM?

For the time being I understand that the ban doesn't actually stop Huawei from using ARM chips - it stops ARM from co-operating to help them build their own chips, e.g. their Kirin line of processors. So either they could just fork their design and stop keeping in lock-step with ARM (while maintaining a level of compatibility) or just start sourcing parts from third parties.

Not entirely true either, as the ban only applies to the US and ARM is a British company, with a Japanese parent company, so there's no conflict. They just can't use Qualcomm chips.

As for Fabs, they can't still use TSMC, Samsung, and the numerous smaller companies in mainland China.

Arm has said that they are not gonna work with Huawei.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-48363772

Some of the tech in ARM chips is licensed from US companies, mostly in the from of patents. Plus ARM has thousands of engineers working in the US, so some of their own tech in their CPUs will be covered by the ban as well.

Wait, why not Samsung? They're still based entirely out of South Korea, right?

There's quite a few outside of China per this list:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat...

That's not how US sanctions work, if you want to deal with the US in any way you have to comply with their sanctions, this is why US sanctions on Iran even unilateral ones are effective.

Will Chinese manufacturers also be prohibited from using Windows?

I think the recent executive order was explicitly for Huawei, which is troubling because the executive branch is targeting not a country, but a specific country. It's likely Apple or Samsung's US dept might have specifically lobbied for this (although we won't know; it's speculative and potentially unethical).

I have a feeling Microsoft, Google, Intel and others will take this to court though. They literally stand to lose hundreds of millions, each!

There is silence from Microsoft, including a silent removal of Huawei laptops from their retail offerings.

Fingers crossed, there will be an Ubuntu (South African) version of a high end laptop coming soon. Not sure what the CPU will be for that though.

According to The Information, via XDA, Huawei's OS is called "Project Z" but it's "far from ready":

https://www.xda-developers.com/huawei-android-alternative-fa...

> The Information‘s report differs greatly from what was reported earlier. Rather than being ready this Fall or early next year, they claim the OS is “far from ready.” It is reportedly being referred to as “Project Z” internally. The report also claims this OS would rely on 3rd-party developers to create apps for it, which may shoot down the idea of Android apps being able to run on the OS.

> According to the report, Huawei has been working on Project Z for several years, but its original intention was to be for their home Chinese market, and not a full Android replacement. If all of this is true, Huawei’s post-Android future may not be as positive as they’d like people to think.

(The Information: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/huawei-consumer-elec...)

Curiously, according to XDA's original Chinese source Huawei's CEO said the new operating system has a microkernel ("微内核") and that it's designed to support a wide range of devices using a single OS, including "mobile phones, computers, tablets, TVs, cars and smart wearable device": https://weibointl.api.weibo.cn/share/72019470.html?weibo_id=...

If that sounds familiar, you might recall Google Fuchsia with the Zircon microkernel:

https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2019/5/9/18563521/goog...

> Fuchsia is designed to run on smart home devices, wearables, or possibly even augmented or virtual reality devices.

Notably, Huawei has already tested Fuchsia on its devices before:

https://www.xda-developers.com/huawei-testing-fuchsia-os-kir...

> A new commit in the Fuchsia source code has revealed that Huawei has managed to boot the Zircon kernel on the Honor Play... You can check out the relevant commit here: https://fuchsia-review.googlesource.com/c/zircon/+/228577

Perhaps Huawei's "Project Z" is based on Fuchsia and Zircon?

Based on history, it may be a pirate reverse-engineered Android OS.

I don't think you have to reverse engineer an open source operating system...

At this point Android is as open source as Windows.

Please point me at anything that resembles source code that I can compile to produce a bootable variant of Windows.

I think the GP was trying to say: just as Windows isn’t OSS, neither is Android anymore because of all the proprietary blobs and the Play Store

Please point me at anything that resembles source code that I can compile to produce Play services.

I was not aware Play Services was required to run Android. I have test phones that run Android without Play Services just fine.

How does that make Androids open source status anywhere near Windows?

It might be against site rules.

What history? Did china reversed engineered Windows?

Isn't also Android notorious for re-implementing Java? So it would be hypocritical for Google to claim that you can't reverse engineer the Google Play APIs

They did that with Cisco routers' OS. Huawei's switches' OS even had Cisco's logo on it.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10485560675556000

Also Sina -> Twitter. Pretty sure the sina API still returns "Retweeted" count last I checked.

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