Huawei Releases HarmonyOS 4

On August 4th, Huawei released HarmonyOS 4, which includes added features such as personalized space, various productivity tools, and an AI assistant for smartphones called “Xiao Yi” with significantly improved intelligence.

1.Xiaoyi AI Upgrade

Richard Yu, a Huawei executive who took the stage first at the press conference, said that Xiaoyi, the AI assistant built into HarmonyOS, will be empowered by the underlying capabilities of PanGu’s large model. It will provide assistance to users in knowledge acquisition, logical reasoning, task planning, memory expansion, tool utilization, and creative support.

Due to being based on a large language model, Xiaoyi can understand complex languages and complete many tasks according to the user’s needs, such as extracting core summaries from documents and scheduling appointments.

At the same time, Huawei also promises that the new Xiaoyi will be a “more responsible AI”, prioritizing security and privacy protection as its first principle, ensuring that AI serves as an assistant rather than a replacement, bringing about enhanced experiences rather than fabrications.

2.Personalization

This fashion catalog has added an AI feature that allows you to select portrait or pet photos in the album and choose corresponding theme styles. With HarmonyOS 4, it can automatically complete tasks such as image cropping and theme design, transforming your photos into stunning wallpapers in seconds.

In addition, HarmonyOS 4 has upgraded and enriched the existing Emoji system. Currently, there are 12 major categories including sports, people, animals, etc., with over 1800 compatible expressions. With the rich Emoji system, users can create personalized mood wallpapers.

There is also a panoramic weather theme, where the wallpaper can automatically switch between 3 different perspectives of weather images based on the current weather and how the user holds their phone.

3.Enhanced Functionality

The new notification center has abandoned the traditional logic of sorting by time and instead classified notifications based on their importance. Live updates, social communications, and other important notifications are prioritized at the top, while marketing information is displayed in a unified area to reduce user distractions. This makes it easier for users to find the most important notification among many others.

In addition, the newly added live window feature can aggregate multiple notifications from the same application into a single dynamic card and present them in a timeline format. For example, for food delivery apps, it can display real-time statuses such as “preparing order”, “ready for pickup”, and “delivered”, avoiding notification overload.

And this feature can not only be used on mobile phones, but also on smartwatches equipped with HarmonyOS 4 called “Xianyue Window”. It allows you to view real-time flight information, food delivery progress, schedule and more.

4.NearLink Technology

At this press conference, Huawei also introduced a new short-range wireless connection technology called NearLink.

According to Huawei’s introduction, NearLink combines the advantages of traditional wireless technologies such as Bluetooth and WiFi into one standard set, resulting in significantly improved performance. Compared to traditional wireless connections, NearLink reduces power consumption by 60%, increases data transmission rate by 6 times, reduces latency to 1/30th, and supports up to 10 times more connections.

5.Smoothness

According to Huawei’s official introduction, HarmonyOS 4 has made further advancements in application ecology, with the new Huawei Ark Compiler engine, which can improve performance by 20% and increase battery life by 30 minutes.

In addition, HarmonyOS 4 provides a smooth user experience in graphics, multimedia, memory management, scheduling, storage, low power consumption, and various devices. The launch and usage speed of commonly used apps such as Alipay, Amap, and Xiaohongshu will be enhanced.

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6.Privacy Security and Digital Care

In this HarmonyOS 4 update, the application control center has been further enhanced to provide users with a more secure operating environment.

When users install applications, HarmonyOS 4 will automatically add risky apps to the application control center and restrict their access to sensitive data and pop-ups. If any risky behavior is detected while an app is running, the application control center will proactively intercept it and prevent associated app launches.

In terms of teenage mobile phone usage, HarmonyOS 4 provides child remote guardianship function to help parents remotely monitor their children’s current device usage status. It supports controlling multiple Huawei devices such as smartphones and tablets.

In recent years, there has been increasing attention on digital inheritance. HarmonyOS 4 also offers its own solution by introducing the digital asset inheritance feature to meet the needs of managing digital legacies for deceased or living users. The inheritor can flexibly set the scope of inheritance, specifying what can be inherited and what cannot.