Huawei Announces HarmonyOS 5 Operating System With AI Features for PCs

Huawei on Thursday introduced HarmonyOS 5, its first-ever self-developed working system (OS) for PCs on the HarmonyOS Laptop Expertise and Ecosystem Communication occasion in China. It’s mentioned to be based mostly on the corporate’s HarmonyOS Subsequent cellular OS which was announced in October 2024 and has been developed independently of Android. Huawei claims it has been rebuilt from the kernel with enhancements made to HarmonyOS Base, HarmonyOS Ecosystem, and HarmonyOS Expertise. It may well help as much as 1,000 exterior peripherals.

The OS leverages Ark graphics for delivering a easy efficiency, whereas the onboard AI assistant can summarise and translate paperwork, and ship question responses. Huawei says its upcoming PCs will probably be powered by HarmonyOS 5 though it didn’t reveal if any current fashions may help it too.

HarmonyOS 5 Options

As per Huawei, it has developed and optimised over 150 purposes for laptop ecosystem use. Greater than 2,000 common ecosystem purposes have additionally been built-in. HarmonyOS 5 makes use of the Ark graphics engine for delivering visible experiences, offering dynamic results in wallpaper, multi-windows, and through multitasking. It permits customisation through private themes.

Multi-window view in HarmonyOS 5
Photograph Credit score: Huawei

Just like a Windows-based expertise, customers can open home windows and modify their icon and measurement as per their desire. Moreover, the standing bar and the duty bar could be customised too. There are gravity results for the house display and photographic results for varied app icons. The OS helps gestures like a three-finger slide for returning to desktop in addition to opening the multitask centre interface.

HarmonyOS 5 options an upgraded Sensible Workplace suite which is claimed to enhance collaboration between a number of units, allow AI options, and hyperlink with different ecosystem units.

An enormous a part of the OS depends on AI for finishing up varied duties, offering personalised content material and good providers based mostly on totally different eventualities. There is a built-in AI assistant with understanding and interplay capabilities. It may well translate paperwork into 21 languages, summarise them, generate stories, and even create journey itineraries. The assistant helps multi-modal interactions, accepting voice instructions, textual content, and pictures as prompts. It has on-screen content material consciousness which might analyse the content material at the moment displaying on the display and supply responses to queries based mostly on that. There’s additionally a Circle-to-Search-like performance which customers can toggle to spotlight part of the display and ask the AI chatbot about it or toggle its net lookup.

Leveraging the brand new star protect safety structure, the HarmonyOS 5 is claimed to ship strong person privateness safety. The corporate emphasises that rigorous safety checks happen earlier than an utility is made obtainable on the App market. The OS is geared toward delivering a unified ecosystem, comprising smartphones, tablets, PCs, and different units. As per Huawei, customers can share peripherals like keyboard and mouse throughout units. It additionally helps high-speed file transfers between units.