Huawei’s Android alternative HongMeng OS could be revealed this week

Huawei’s sub-brand Honor is expected to showcase a Smart TV with Hongmeng at the developer conference. Honor has already confirmed some features of the Smart TV, including a popup camera at the front for AI-based facial recognition.

There is a lot of confusion around HongMeng OS and what Huawei wants to do with this. Earlier Huawei founder revealed that HongMeng was faster than Android and MacOS. In an interview with French Magazine Le Point, Ren Zhengfei said HongMeng operating system is more than a replacement for Android.

But after that Huawei senior vice president Cathrine Chen denied that HongMeng will replace Android. She had said that the operating system contains a fewer line of codes than a phone OS and has much lower latency, which means it can process a high level of data messages with little delay.

The executive claimed that HongMeng OS is designed specifically for industrial use. However, it would appear from recent reports that HongMeng is also being tested on smartphones. More clarity is expected when Huawei’s developer conference is over.

Currently Huawei phones have the company’s own EMUI on top, though they run Android operating system.  But the recent US-China trade tensions saw Huawei caught in the crossfire with the US government banning companies from trading with the Chinese telecom major.

It meant that Huawei phones would not be able to run Android in the future, though the ban was later revoked.  At that time, Huawei executives had indicated they were ready for the possibility that they might not be able to use Android on future phones.