Huawei might have revealed a key feature of Google’s Android replacement

[Chris Smith]

• A recent comment from Huawei about HarmonyOS seems to hint that Google's rumored Android replacement might get an exciting new feature.
• Huawei confirmed that its phones that still run an Android version stripped of Google's mobile services will be upgradeable to the new operating system.
• That's the kind of functionality Fuchsia will have to support: Allowing owners of Android phones to upgrade to the next version of Google's mobile software without having to spend money on new hardware.

The US government's ban on Huawei, which is about to get even worse for the Chinese conglomerate, forced the company to create its own flavor of Android for western markets. Huawei uses Android as the base OS for its phones, but can't use any Google apps on top of it, which is really the magic of Android. As a result, Huawei had to come up with its own app store, as well as app alternatives for everything you'd expect to find or install on an Android phone. There's no Search, Gmail, Maps, or YouTube on Huawei's phones, and you'll have to download alternatives instead. But having Huawei Mobile Services over Android is just a temporary fix to a huge problem.

Huawei will start replacing Android as soon as next year, with HarmonyOS 2.0 getting support for smartphones in late 2020. That may be seen as a defeat for Google, because it is. Huawei sold hundreds of millions of phones running Google apps outside of China before the ban. Once HarmonyOS becomes the default operating system for Huawei, Google stands to lose a chunk of advertising money coming from those phones. But Google has embarked on its operation to replace Android with something better: Fuchsia. And Huawei just confirmed what may turn out to be one of its key features.

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Huawei might have revealed a key feature of Google’s Android replacement originally appeared on BGR.com on Fri, 11 Sep 2020 at 18:34:40 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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