How to test Huawei’s HarmonyOS with its official PC emulator

A week ago, Huawei HarmonyOS advertised globally, presenting its advantages and advancing 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 your emulator in March, when it was still available in China. DevEco Studio and its emulator is now available globallySo there’s nothing stopping you from taking a look at HarmonyOS without compromise and without having to wait for it to be deployed.

Sign up as a developer

As we mentioned before, the good news is that the download of DevEco Studio -something like the Android Studio Huawei- is available to anyone, whereas previously it was limited to Chinese users. The bad news is that it is still necessary to have a verified developer account.

It all starts with a Huawei account standard, which can be the same with which you have registered in any device of the brand. 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. Mail must be verified, writing a code that will be sent to you.

This account by itself will not serve you, you need to verify your identity 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 driving 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 assumes that it can take several days until your account is 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 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 DevEco Studio installation it has no mystery, and practically all you need to do is press Next until all 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 will need to create or open a project in order to see the main interface of the application, so that you can open the menu Tools> Device Manager, the place where the emulator is located.

The HarmonyOS emulator from DevEco Studio is remote and that is why the first step is sign 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 see then 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 try 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.

HarmonyOS emulator works much better than when we tried it in China and displays 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.

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How to test Huawei HarmonyOS with its official PC emulator

was originally published in

Engadget Android

for
Ivan Ramirez

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