The HarmonyOS 5-powered smartphones have been released, and HarmonyOS-powered computers are coming soon. Huawei is embracing an acceleration in the development of "HarmonyOS".

In the era of AI phones, the innovation paradigm in the mobile phone industry has long since changed.

There was a time when breakthroughs in single-point technologies such as under-screen fingerprint, foldable screens, mobile imaging, and fast charging for long battery life led waves of mobile phone replacement tides in the industry. However, when large models are introduced to smart terminals and AI penetrates into the underlying operating system, the "reinvention" of smartphones is no longer just a "competition" of stacking functions and parameters.

Hardware is no longer an undifferentiated carrier for manufacturers to occupy the market, and software is not just the core for boosting profits and capturing users' minds. In fact, today's innovation in the mobile phone industry is a systematic competition spanning three levels: software, hardware, and ecosystem.

Everything is for the user experience. When the balance of innovation discourse always tilts towards the user, only the terminal experience reconstructed through the synergy of software and hardware can break the "innovation cycle" of the involution of performance parameters. On March 20th, a smartphone specially designed for HarmonyOS 5 made its debut at the Huawei Pura Pioneer Festival and the New Product Launch of HarmonyOS Smart Mobility.

This phone is the Huawei Pura X, the first phone launched by Huawei to be fully equipped with HarmonyOS 5. At the same time, at the launch event, Huawei also announced a new upgrade plan for HarmonyOS 5, enabling it to cover more models.

According to official information, in the second quarter of 2025, Huawei will start the push and upgrade plan for HarmonyOS 5.0.1 for multiple models, including the HUAWEI Mate 70 series, HUAWEI Mate 60 series, HUAWEI Mate X6 series, and HUAWEI MatePad Pro 13.2-inch series.

By the end of March 2025, the HUAWEI nova 13 series and HUAWEI nova 12 series will start the public beta of HarmonyOS 5, and multiple models such as the HUAWEI MatePad Pro 13.2-inch 2025 and HUAWEI MatePad Pro 12.2-inch will start the pollen Beta.

Meanwhile, the "HarmonyOS PC" was officially announced to be released in May. How will Huawei, which is comprehensively opening the HarmonyOS era with its two core terminals, mobile phones and computers, use this full-scenario operating system for the Internet of Everything to trigger a new round of experience transformation in smart terminals?

The Arrival of HarmonyOS 5 Phones and HarmonyOS PCs: Huawei's Terminals Accelerate the Adoption of HarmonyOS

The relationship between software and hardware is transitioning from "traditional adaptation" to "reverse definition."

As early as last century, the differences in computer hardware led to the fact that past operating systems often had to be customized according to the hardware. In this traditional development model, it can be said that hardware determines the form of software and also strictly limits its functions.

However, with the advent of the open-source era and the continuous progress of interface standardization technology, modern operating systems like HarmonyOS and Android have greatly improved their cross-platform capabilities and started to achieve the reverse innovation of "software defining hardware."

This is exactly the greatest uniqueness of the Huawei Pura X: It is a phone specially built for HarmonyOS 5.

It not only improves the system fluency by 30% but also deeply reconstructs the privacy protection mechanism from the system layer, framework layer, and application layer.

HarmonyOS has also enabled Huawei to break the long-term bipolar situation in the mobile operating system field. According to data from Counterpoint, as early as the first quarter of 2024, HarmonyOS exceeded iOS with a 17% share for the first time, becoming the second-largest smartphone operating system in China.

Secondly, compared with the past touch-screen interaction, this new form of phone also supports multi-modal interaction including voice, gestures, and vision. Assisted by the Pangu and DeepSeek dual models, Xiaoyi can not only accurately understand users' needs but also assist in handling complex affairs. It has functions such as Xiaoyi answering calls on behalf, Xiaoyi intelligent caching, and Xiaoyi time machine, understanding users' emotions and lives, and bringing users an unexpectedly considerate interactive experience.

Especially with the distributed capabilities of HarmonyOS 5, this intelligent experience can seamlessly flow between mobile phones, tablets, cars, computers, and smart home devices. By breaking the information silos between terminal devices, a new foundation for the era of the Internet of Everything is established.

Finally, through the vertical integration of "hardware - system - application," it has also created a new innovation ecosystem. As of now, HarmonyOS 5 not only has a large team of more than 7.2 million developers but also more than 20,000 HarmonyOS applications and meta-services.

This is not only the transformation brought by HarmonyOS to the smartphone industry but also a sample of China's scientific and technological innovation empowering the digital transformation of all industries. As the efficient model of "one-time development, multi-terminal deployment" is verified, the growing HarmonyOS ecosystem will continue to gather global innovation forces.

It can be seen that the birth of HarmonyOS phones is an inevitable result of the development of HarmonyOS from an initial operating system to a prosperous ecosystem today. As Yu Chengdong, Executive Director of Huawei, Chairman of the Consumer BG, and Chairman of the Intelligent Automotive Solution BU, has repeatedly emphasized, this is the first phone born for HarmonyOS, achieving new breakthroughs in hardware, software, and ecosystem.

At this launch event, Yu Chengdong also announced that the HarmonyOS PC will debut in May and said that the HarmonyOS PC will bring new development opportunities and growth soil to the computer field. He sincerely invited ecological partners and developers to jointly build the HarmonyOS PC ecosystem map.

When HarmonyOS extends from mobile phones to more types of terminals, the imagination space brought by the HarmonyOS system will also expand exponentially.

Especially when the number of HarmonyOS ecosystem devices exceeds one billion, Huawei terminals including foldable screens, earphones, cars, and tablets have built a large HarmonyOS ecosystem network, accelerating the adoption of HarmonyOS in Huawei's smart terminals.

This is not just about the popularization of a single operating system among users, nor is it just a substitute for iOS and Android. Instead, it is to form a "third pole" in the global operating system with a differentiated route of independent and open source.

HarmonyOS is Accelerating Towards Maturity

Since its project initiation in 2016, HarmonyOS has aimed to be a distributed operating system for the Internet of Everything.

HarmonyOS 1.0 was launched in 2019 and has since gone through several iterations. In 2023, Huawei announced the removal of the Linux kernel and AOSP code, and HarmonyOS NEXT fully shifted to native application development.

Until the official push of HarmonyOS 5, as Yu Chengdong said at last year's HarmonyOS Night, HarmonyOS has achieved self-control in the terminal operating system in 10 years, while foreign counterparts took 30 years.

It can be said that today's HarmonyOS 5 has redefined the value and boundaries of the operating system.

Looking back at the past 25 years of the mobile Internet, the commercial success of Apple's iOS with its closed ecosystem has shown us how high the cost is for mobile phone users to migrate between different brand ecosystems.

What HarmonyOS aims to do is to be an operating system for all terminals in the era of the Internet of Everything, from the desktop to the mobile and then to the IoT terminals. This not only benefits from the distributed technology of one-time development and multi-terminal deployment but also relies on the self-developed HarmonyOS kernel and the Xingdun security architecture to improve system fluency and privacy protection capabilities.

The five characteristics including native refinement, native intelligence, native interconnection, native security, and native fluency have not only become the reasons for more and more users to upgrade to the HarmonyOS system but also given HarmonyOS the confidence and determination to "divide the mobile operating system market into three parts."

From surpassing iOS for the first time in the Chinese market in early 2024 to become the second-largest operating system, to the public beta of HarmonyOS NEXT in October 2024, and then five months later, after collecting more than 4 million user feedbacks and going through more than 30 iterations, with more than 150 new functional features added, HarmonyOS, which connects the application ecosystem above and the card clusters below, is growing rapidly.

If the maturity of the HarmonyOS system is from 0 to 1, then the prosperity of the HarmonyOS ecosystem is a process from 1 to 100. When Huawei first announced HarmonyOS, the biggest concern from the outside world was the "lack of applications." However, after a year and a half, the HarmonyOS ecosystem has achieved the listing of more than 20,000 HarmonyOS applications and meta-services. Among them, more than 20 apps such as WeChat, Douyin, Alipay, Gaode Map, and JD.com have been downloaded more than 2 million times.

At the same time, government and enterprise office application software is also accelerating the adoption of HarmonyOS. For example, "Suishenban" in Shanghai, "Yukuai Ban" in Chongqing, and "Minzheng Tong" in Fujian have not only greatly improved the experience of people's livelihood services but also provided a new development paradigm for the government services of more cities.

As Yu Chengdong said at the Huawei Developer Conference 2024 in June last year, HarmonyOS has never been a one-man show. It is the result of the joint efforts of all HarmonyOS developers. With the joint efforts of all industries, Huawei has been able to achieve full coverage of HarmonyOS native applications and services in 18 vertical fields, meeting 99.9% of users' usage time.

It can be clearly foreseen that whether it is the birth of the HarmonyOS 5 phone or the upcoming arrival of the HarmonyOS PC, more diverse terminal scenarios, more updates of existing devices, and more extensive application adaptation are enabling HarmonyOS to accelerate its journey to every corner of the digital world. And the continuously enriched and improved HarmonyOS experience will in turn build a solid moat for the entire HarmonyOS ecosystem.

As an aggregation platform, smart terminals, through the in-depth synergy of hardware, software, and ecosystem, are reconstructing not only human-computer interaction and intelligent experience but also the prelude to innovation in a new era.

As HarmonyOS accelerates towards maturity and Huawei's terminals accelerate the "Harmonization," for developers eager to explore the dividends of the era, this is an innovative platform with high development potential and inclusiveness; for users eager to build a new digital life, it is also a new choice to try.

This article is from the WeChat official account "36 Krypton", published by 36 Krypton with authorization.