Honor Vision smart TV is the world’s first device to run Huawei’s new HarmonyOS

Huawei subsidiary Honor launched the Honor Vision smart TV at its developer conference 2019 in China on Saturday. Not only is it Honor’s first smart screen product, it also packs several technologies – including a pop-up camera module - that set it apart from counterparts. But that’s not what the Honor Vision will go down in history for. What it will really be known for, in the days to come is the fact that, the Honor Vision smart TV is the world’ first device to run Huawei’s new HarmonyOS operating system. 

Also announced at its developer conference 2019 – just a day before – Huawei's HarmonyOS is a microkernel-based, distributed operating system for all scenarios - smartphones, laptops, wearables, basically all connected devices. HarmonyOS is also Huawei’s home-grown answer to Google’s Android (and Microsoft’s Windows) designed to “deliver a cohesive user experience across all devices and user scenarios.” 

Huawei seems confident about its home-grown operating system – in fact, it is going so far as to say that HarmonyOS is faster, smoother (due to the presence of a dedicated deterministic latency engine and its light-weight nature in general) and more secure (due to its microkernel design) than Android. HarmonyOS will be open source (like much of Android is) with its own ARK compiler and it will support existing Android apps, Huawei has confirmed.   

Huawei is still bullish about its future with Google’s Android – following the recent US trade clampdown - which is why it has also confirmed that it would only use HarmonyOS in its smartphones in the worst-case scenario. In which case, it would not take very long for it to switch to its home-grown alternative. 

In the meantime, we will see other connected devices like the Honor Vision, taking things forward vis-a-vis HarmonyOS.  

Honor is touting three key technologies that set the Honor Vision apart from other smart TVs – and all these three technologies have been built in-house. 

• Honghu 818 Intelligent Display Chipset that seemingly “enhances and optimizes image resolution, contrast and color performance through multiple algorithms." 
• AI Camera NPU chipset that powers a smart pop-up AI camera for “face recognition, body tracking and posture detection.” 
• Wi-Fi chipset which is claimed to be the “world’s first chipset to support a 160MHz bandwidth with a download rate of up to 1.7Gbps.” 

Coming to the design specifics, the Honor Vision is essentially a 55-inch 4K HDR TV with a full-view design (Honor claims a screen-to-body ratio of a whopping 94 per cent) and a 6.9mm full metal frame.  

Price starts at RMB 3,799 (roughly Rs 38,200) for the standard variant with 2GB RAM and 16GB storage, going all the way to RMB 4,799 (roughly Rs 48,200) for the pro variant with 2GB RAM and 32GB storage.