Is Huawei's Hongmeng OS mobile phone far away from us?

Even during the National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival holidays, the technology circle was not idle.

A few days ago, someone revealed the adaptation process of Hongmeng OS on smartphones on Weibo, which mainly started from the chips installed on the mobile phone, covering Kirin 9000 to Kirin 710, which attracted widespread attention.

Of course, in addition to Huawei's Hongmeng OS, the outside world is also paying attention to the upcoming Huawei Mate 40 phone. Some people even said in the comments that the Mate 40 phone may be equipped with Hongmeng OS 2.0 when it is released - this is a bit too speculative.

Hongmeng OS is undoubtedly worth looking forward to, but when it comes to smartphones, you really can’t rush it.

Hongmeng OS adaptation plan exposed, excluding Kirin 970 models

On October 3, digital blogger "Courage Digital" exposed the Hongmeng OS adaptation process, mainly referring to the adaptation of smartphones. Judging from the content of the Weibo, the blogger has been paying attention to Huawei and Honor for a long time, and has quite a few connections within Huawei, so he has a certain degree of credibility.

The adaptation process in the leak is mainly distinguished from the SoC processor, the core device of the smartphone. Specifically:

The first batch is Kirin 9000;

The second batch is Kirin 990 5G

The third batch includes Kirin 990 4G (part), Kirin 985 and Kirin 820 (part);

The fourth batch is Kirin 820 (part), Kirin 980 and Kirin 990 4G (part) fourth batch;

The last ones are Kirin 810 and Kirin 710 (part).

Judging from Huawei's Kirin chip product system, this revelation has a certain degree of rationality.

Kirin 9000 is a Kirin chip that Huawei has publicly announced but has not released specific information or made available for public sale. What can be confirmed now is that it is manufactured using TSMC's 5nm process and will be installed in the Huawei Mate 40 series smartphones that will be released soon.

It is not surprising that it is the first to be adapted.

In addition to the Kirin 9000, the Kirin 9 series are adapted to the Kirin 990 series (including 5G/4G), Kirin 985 and Kirin 980; among them, the Kirin 985 is a mid-to-high-end Kirin chip launched in 2020, the Kirin 990 series is the flagship chip of 2019, and the Kirin 980 is the flagship chip of 2018 - they all use TSMC's 7nm process, but are divided into the first and second generations.

As for the Kirin 970, which uses a 10nm process in 2017, it is not supported.

Looking at the Kirin 8 series, there are two chips in the adaptation plan. Among them, Kirin 820 is a Kirin chip launched in March this year, positioned as a mid-range chip; Kirin 810 was released last year, it was the first to be equipped with Huawei's self-developed Da Vinci architecture; both also use TSMC's 7nm process technology.

Finally, there is the Kirin 710 of the 7 series, which was released in July 2018 and built using TSMC's 12nm process - it is the chip with the longest release time and the lowest process technology among all the above adaptation plans.

In general, it can be seen that among the Kirin chips involved in the above revelations, Huawei will trace the adaptation plan back to the Kirin chips and related models released in 2018, with the lowest processor process being 12nm.

It should be noted that in Huawei's (and Honor's) smartphone product system, not all models use Kirin chips. Some mid- and low-end products also use MediaTek and Qualcomm chips. At present, it is not yet known whether these models will be adapted.

In addition, although this leak involves the relevant Kirin chips, it does not specifically talk about the adaptation time, so for ordinary consumers, the expectations that this leak can meet are not that high.

Hongmeng is worth looking forward to, but it can’t be rushed on smartphones

HarmonyOS made its first appearance at the Huawei Developer Conference (HDC) in 2019; by the HDC in 2020, it was already HarmonyOS 2.0.

In fact, Hongmeng OS has made great progress from 1.0 to 2.0.

For example, at the previous Huawei Developer Conference, Wang Chenglu, President of Huawei Consumer Business Software, officially announced the complete platform tool chain of Hongmeng OS, including the Hongmeng OS application framework, more than 13,000 APIs, HUAWEI DevEco development tools, Ark compiler and distributed applications.

Of course, Hongmeng 2.0 has also been open source, and the relevant code can be downloaded from official channels.

At the application ecosystem level, at HDC, Wang Chenglu stated that Hongmeng OS 2.0 has already reached cooperation with manufacturers such as Midea, Joyoung, and ROBAM Electric Appliances, and these brands will soon have devices equipped with Hongmeng OS 2.0 on the market in the future.

Wang Chenglu also stated in the Songshan Lake Dialogue that Hongmeng OS already supports the installation and use of third-party products, totaling more than 20 product categories and 12 million third-party smart terminal devices.

In addition, Midea's vice president and business unit president Zhang Xiaoyi also stated in the Songshan Lake Dialogue that Midea has formed an application development team for Hongmeng OS. Midea has 15 smart home appliance products equipped with Hongmeng OS, which will be launched on the market before this year's Double 11.

Of course, these smart products have nothing to do with smartphones.

In fact, it is easy to understand. A crucial reason is the application ecosystem. In July this year, BYD Han equipped with Hongmeng system was officially launched. When Yu Chengdong supported it, he said that there are millions of applications in mobile phones, tens of thousands of applications in PCs, thousands of applications in smart TVs, and hundreds of applications in cars.

This is also the reason why Hongmeng can appear on smart cars before version 2.0 is released. After all, the larger the application ecosystem, the more difficult it is to migrate Hongmeng.

In fact, Huawei also has news about smartphones.

Previously at HDC, Yu Chengdong announced that the mobile version of Hongmeng OS will be launched in December, and Huawei smartphones will be fully upgraded to support Hongmeng OS 2.0 in 2021.

Wang Chenglu also said that mobile phones will undoubtedly still be the center of the future Hongmeng system. Although there are many devices equipped with HarmonyOS that can act as rich media of mobile phones, in this system, everyone is a peripheral of each other.

It can be seen that for Hongmeng OS, mobile phones are still the core and must be covered, it is just a matter of time.

Leiphone.com (official account: Leiphone.com) noticed that during Huawei HDC, Huawei also displayed a PPT showing Huawei's application partners, including Baidu Maps, Himalaya, Kuaishou, Kugou, Sogou Input Method, 12306, WPS, Didi, VIP KIDS, etc., covering office, music, short videos, travel and other fields.

These can also be seen as Huawei's efforts to promote the migration of smartphones to Hongmeng OS.

Judging from subsequent developments, a number of application developers, including Baidu Maps and Didi, have announced their cooperation with Hongmeng OS through official channels, which also shows that Hongmeng OS is also making slow progress in its application ecosystem.

summary

In a high-risk survival environment, it is wise to have an extra backup option.

For Huawei's smartphone business, at least for now, it is still inseparable from the Android ecosystem, and HMS 5.0 is also being vigorously promoted; even the alternative option Hongmeng OS is inseparable from the inheritance of some existing development results in the Android application ecosystem, such as the Ark Compiler and HMS.

Therefore, when Huawei Mate40 is released, it will definitely be equipped with EMUI, but the first batch will be adapted to Hongmeng OS later.

As for ordinary consumer users, if they want to experience Hongmeng OS on Huawei phones, they can only wait with great patience. At the very least, they will not be able to see the adapted upgraded version until next year - but if they want to actually buy a phone that is equipped with Hongmeng OS from the factory, it is probably still a long way off.

However, the Huawei Mate 40 series is really just around the corner.