A week ago, Huawei announced HarmonyOS globally, presenting its advantages and anticipating which terminals will be updated . In Spain, there is still no date for the arrival of HarmonyOS, but you can try it with its official emulator .
We already had the chance to test HarmonyOS on its emulator in March, when it was still available in China. DevEco Studio and its emulator are now available globally , so nothing prevents you from taking a look at HarmonyOS without compromise and without having to wait for its deployment.
Sign up as a developer
As we mentioned before, the good news is that the download of DevEco Studio – something like Huawei’s Android Studio – is available to anyone, whereas before it was limited to Chinese users. The bad news is that you still need to have a verified developer account .
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It all starts with a standard Huawei account , which can be the same one you have registered with on any Huawei device. If you don’t have an account, you can create one from this link .
The form requires you to enter your country (which you will not be able to change later), an email address, date of birth and a password. The email must be verified , writing a code that will be sent to you.
This account by itself will not work for you, you need to verify your identity by sending Huawei a photo of an identity document and a bank card. If this is not a problem for you, tap on your name in the top bar on the web and tap on Identity Verification .
Then it is time to add a few additional details to your account. You must enter your address, phone number and upload photos of identity documents. You can choose between ID, passport or driver’s license , in all cases, accompanied by a credit card.
Verification is manual, which means that someone at Huawei must check that everything is correct and give it OK. In practice, this means that it may take several days for your account to be verified. Until it is, you cannot use the DevEco Studio emulator.
Install DevEco Studio
The next step is to install DevEco Studio on your PC. You can download it from its official website without major problem. You do not need to have an account or be logged in. It is available for Windows 10 and for macOS 10.14 or higher. The minimum requirements are the same in both cases: 8 GB of RAM and more than 100 GB of storage.
The installation of DevEco Studio has no mystery, and practically all you will need to do is press Next until all the steps are completed. The default configuration is recommended, although you are always free to make adjustments according to your preferences.
Choose your virtual device with HarmonyOS
When the DevEco Studio installation is complete, open it up and complete any additional configuration steps that are still pending. You must create or open a project to be able to see the main interface of the application, so that you can open the Tools> Device Manager menu , the place where the emulator is located.
The HarmonyOS emulator from DevEco Studio is remote and that is why the first step is to log in with your verified Huawei account , pressing Login . The PC browser will open for this, where you must log in with your account and press Allow , to give DevEco Studio permission to use your Huawei account.
If everything went well, the web will tell you that you have successfully logged in, at which point you can return to DevEco Studio. You will then see the list of virtual devices . At the time of writing this text, DevEco Studio shows three virtual devices: a MatePad Pro, a smartwatch and a TV.
Press the play button next to the virtual device you want to test and the connection will start. The system works by streaming, so it has some lag. If it goes too slow, you can change the quality with the first button on the bottom toolbar.
Huawei lets you test HarmonyOS on this virtual emulator for 1 hour . When the time is up, the device will be released and you will lose all the changes that you could have made. The emulator can be controlled with the mouse and, although HarmonyOS is in English, you can change it to Spanish from the settings.
The HarmonyOS emulator works significantly better than when we tested it in China and shows the latest system interface. While it won’t help you test “super device” capabilities or other more complex issues, it does at least give you an idea of what various pre-installed apps are and how they work.