The day’s finally here! Huawei‘s annual developer conference, HDC 2020, is taking place from September 10 – 12, at Huawei HQ in Shenzhen, China starting at 9 am today.
Aside from the usual developer fare — including breakout sessions in fintech, gaming, ecommerce, and travel & navigation — we’re expecting a handful of hardware announcements, as well as the latest developments on HMS Core 5.0, HarmonyOS, and EMUI 11. You can find the agenda here. Follow along the live stream below for the latest, and scroll down for our up-to-the-minute event coverage and reactions.
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Live blog
Follow along with TNW’s live blog, which will be updated here throughout the day. Hit refresh for the latest from journalist Bryan Clark:
[9:08] Off to a late start. I’m not mad. But if I hear the same song again I’m switching careers.
[9:12] And we’re off.
[9:18] HiCar, supported in 150+ vehicle models, could be in more than five million vehicles by 2021. The service is Huawei’s version of Apple’s CarPlay or Android Auto, and it sounds like the company has big plans for it in China. Don’t hold your breath that we’ll see this in the United States or Europe anytime soon, or at all.
[9:21] The rumors about HarmonyOS 2.0 are true. No word on a release date yet, though it was just announced. I don’t think this one surprises anyone, as Huawei has been teasing the latest iteration of an “all device” operating system for weeks now.
[9:23] Spoke too soon. We’ll see HarmonyOS 2.0 today for smart TVs, watches, and headsets. It comes to smartphones in December 2020. Huawei also just announced that it was open sourcing the operating system for collaborative development and the advancement of Chinese-built apps like TikTok.
[9:31] HarmonyOS 2.0 brings about improvements in throughput, latency, and reliability. The OS is built for multi-device connection and touts seamless integration of all devices, whether connected with WiFi or Bluetooth. Self-discovery and self-networking bring automatic connectivity no matter which device you’re trying to connect, how you’re trying to connect it, or which network you want to connect it to.
[9:36] Huawei’s touting the money and time that it has spent on creating “airtight” security.
[9:44] Three ways to join the HarmonyOS ecosystem: distributed SDKs, open source code, or applying targeted code. Over 12 million devices are currently using Harmony SDKs. There are 17 subsystems and 134 code repositories.
[9:48] HarmonyOS is coming to toasters. This actually looks pretty cool, similar to smart ovens like those offered by June and Tovala, only in an app with a connected oven. We’ll see it in everything from refrigerators to washers and dryers. I might need some convincing that a smart dryer is the future.
[9:59] DevEco 2.0, Huawei’s integrated development environment (IDE) brings real-time preview, code completion, security detection along with highly efficient debugging. It has a distributed scheduler, simulation modules, and automated testing.
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