Huawei introduced HarmonyOS 4 at an event in China. The operating system’s latest interface brings a new design and customization options for smartphones, tablets and smartwatches. According to Huawei’s statement, the HarmonyOS ecosystem is currently used on more than 700 million devices.
HarmonyOS 4 features and design
The first major innovation of HarmonyOS 4 will be the home screen design. Users will now be able to customize their home screens with new font styles, colors, clock designs and widgets. It will also be possible to choose an emoji and turn it into a wallpaper. Huawei’s emoji pack will be updated with animated options.
The notification center has also been overhauled as part of the update. Users will now have the chance to split incoming alerts according to their preferences. It will be possible to pin notifications for specific apps and interact with the notification center without opening the app.
Huawei says it will return to the old days in the smartphone market. Its sales in China have almost doubled.
Huawei has also launched Live Window, a new design similar to Apple’s Dynamic Island. Devices with a screen-embedded selfie camera will now display real-time alerts and notifications around the camera module. Users will be able to expand the window with a single tap to interact with the app.
The number of cards or widgets that can be added to the home screen has also been increased. HarmonyOS 4 will allow users to combine multiple files, text and images together and transfer them between HarmonyOS devices.
The new operating system also gets performance upgrades. Huawei promises 20 percent better performance with faster app launches and smoother animations.
The beta version of HarmonyOS 4 is now available on 34 devices, including the Mate50, P60 and Mate X3. Another 35 devices, including the P40, Mate 30, Nova 9 and Nova 10 series, will be added to the beta program.
