Strengths and weaknesses of the Huawei operating system

In Germany, the upgrade from Android to HarmonyOS for Huawei smartphones has not yet been offered. If you want to use the new operating system, you have to buy a Huawei MatePad 11, where HarmonyOS is pre-installed. We looked at the advantages and disadvantages of the operating system on the tablet.

Tried HarmonyOS on the Huawei MatePad 11

Things couldn’t be better for Huawei at the moment with regard to HarmonyOS. The new operating system was installed over 90 million times in a very short space of time. HarmonyOS is currently only available as an upgrade in China. If you want to use it here, you can use the Huawei Watch 3 Pro or the MatePad 11. We set out to do the latter to find out how good HarmonyOS really is in normal use.

In the following Video our findings are summarized:

Huawei has come up with a lot to differentiate itself from Android with HarmonyOS. Particularly on tablets, Huawei’s ideas seem to be well thought out. The competition is clearly weak in this area. But this also applies to apps that are often not adapted for the big screen. The same problem persists with HarmonyOS because you are basically using Android apps.

If you rely on Google services and want to use them, you have no business with HarmonyOS. For most apps that do not rely on Google services, a solution can be found via manual installation. But that is also a additional effort and for users and not really intuitive.

Google wants to swap .apk files for .aab files

It could be difficult for Huawei if Google swaps the APK format for the “Android App Bundle” format. This actually requires the Google Play Store, so that newer apps and games can no longer be opened automatically. Huawei has indicated to us that the .abb format is then also supported by HarmonyOSHow exactly this should work was not revealed when asked. So it remains exciting.