In August this year, Huawei introduced its new Harmony OS, intended for a wide range of products, including mobile phones, tablets, wearables, laptops, and smart TVs. Shortly after the introduction, the first product to be launched on Harmony was the Huawei’s Honor 4K Vision TV.
On September 22, 2019, at the launch event of the Mate 30, Huawei introduced first Huawei TV, the eponymous 4K Vision TV is an advanced variant of the Honor TV and also runs on the new operating system.
Huawei TV has a better screen with quantum dot technology and also offers better sound quality. The television serves as a kind of hub for smart home products. This smart screen will serve as the central center of the Harmony ecosystem as a large number of products announced that run on this operating system.
Huawei Vision is more than a TV
During the presentation, Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei, said that the Vision is more than a TV, it is a smartphone with a large screen and a smart speaker in one. TV functionality is only one of the functions, according to the CEO. This smart screen is constantly on standby, so you can always talk to it.
The Huawei Vision has intelligent interaction possibilities, artificial intelligence, IoT smart home control, and a professional 5.1 Sound Effect. Two screen sizes have been announced, 65-inch and 75-inch. In addition, the company is developing a smaller and larger model, in the form of a 55-inch and an 85-inch TV model.
The 4K Quantum Dot screen delivers a color range of 100% NTSC and a 120 Hz refresh rate. The professional 5.1 sound system would be the best available home cinema system for home use. There are 8 high-quality speakers built-in, one subwoofer, and one reflector. So in total, there are 10 audio elements built-in, which together ensure a beautiful sound quality, according to the manufacturer.
A corresponding remote controller has also been announced with a touchpad and voice control support. The controller has Bluetooth 5.0 and has a battery life of 3 months. Also unique is the ‘One Hop Projection’ option, to easily project the image from your smartphone onto the large Vision television screen, with a frame rate of 60fps.
Furthermore, a pop-up camera has been built in, but the specifications of this camera system have not yet been released. You can also use AI Video Calling, AI Kids and AI Fitness are also built-in. The television has both face recognition and tracking technology.
However, it is not clear when the Huawei Vision TV will be released. As per speculations, the smart screen might be first released in China. Huawei probably wants to further shape the Harmony operating system before the company will also enter other markets, understandably in view of the turbulent and uncertain situation in which Huawei has recently entered.
Setting up a new operating system is not that easy as it sounds as you depend on developers for the applications. Unfortunately, the initial reactions from developers in China are still not very positive.
Although everyone looked forward to Huawei Harmony, which must be up to 60% faster than Android and moreover can be used for many more types of devices, the success will depend on the applications that users can install.
Developers complain that the Ark OS Compiler, with which Android apps can be converted to the Harmony OS, is only half-finished. It feels incomplete and would only have been introduced as a publicity stunt. Disappointing, but at the same time understandable.
This simply requires more time. For the time being, we remain positive about the Harmony OS because if one manufacturer has proven to be innovative in recent years, it is Huawei.