Bye-bye Google? Huawei said to be working on a totally new mobile operating system

By Christian de Looper June 23, 2016

Malarie Gokey/Digital Trends

The past few years have been good to Huawei. The company has grown into an international powerhouse, and it can even boast that its Nexus phone and Android Wear smartwatch are among the best ever made. However, it seems as though Huawei could be looking to take things to the next level. How? With it’s own operating system.

According to a report from the Information, Huawei has started working on its own operating system for smartphones, using a development team that includes a few former Nokia employees. According to the report, Huawei “doesn’t want to be on the crutch of Android,” essentially meaning that it doesn’t want to have to rely on an operating system that it doesn’t have full control over.

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Of course, this isn’t the first time we’ve heard that Huawei is looking to develop its own operating system. Last year similar rumors emerged, suggesting that the operating system is to be called Kirin, and isn’t simply a fork of Android like CyanogenMod, but instead a totally new operating system.

Huawei uses Android for its smartphones, but like many other Android manufacturers, it adds its own user interface over the top. Huawei’s user interface is called EMUI, and according to the report, the company will continue to use and develop EMUI while working on its own operating system. In fact, Huawei’s design chief Abigail Brody, who has a background at Apple, recently said that some pretty significant improvements are coming to EMUI.

Huawei seems to be following in the footsteps of Samsung, which, of course, developed Tizen. Tizen is currently used in Samsung’s smartwatches, but the company recently said that it’s interested in bringing the OS to other devices, too.

If the rumors turn out to be true, it’s likely we’ll see both Samsung and Huawei edge away from their Google dependency. What that means for users, however, is unclear. It’s already hard enough for a user to go from Apple’s ecosystem to Google’s, and with so many others in the mix, things could get even more difficult.

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