Huawei, one of the world’s largest smartphone vendors, revealed plans to launch an Android-Windows dual-OS mobile device at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last month. But now there’s a small change of plans: They’re not doing it anymore.
“Most of our products are based on Android OS, [and] at this stage there are no plans to launch a dual-OS smartphone in the near future,” Huawei said in a statement to FireWireless. However, they will continue to support Android and Windows phones separately.
This comes as a blow to consumers looking forward to running both Android and Windows operating systems on their phone, but mostly to Microsoft, whose Windows Phone usage lags behind Google’s Android OS and Apple’s iOS.
Partnering with Android was supposed to expose Windows Phone capabilities to a broader audience. There was a better chance of consumers buying the phone if there was Android on it too. But there is apparently not enough incentive for Google to allow Microsoft’s OS to coexist on the same device. It seems as if the vision for this phone was all too narrow. Dual-operating systems might seem twice as cool, but it would have also made a software tester’s scope of operations twice as complicated.
The first list outlines the benefits of having a dual-OS device. The second outlines why this system may not have been be so beneficial after all.
The advantages:
- The ability to organize between two OS. Business by day, personal by night, perhaps?
- Compatibility. The customer can use software/hardware even if it’s only supported on one OS.
- Share programs between the different OS. Only those which are compatible with both, but yes, you can share.
- Share your Hard Disk Drive. Although you can use two, you can save everything to one HDD if you wish.
- Impress your friends because instead of one OS, you have two.
The disadvantages:
- Testing and developing for one mobile operating system is hard enough. Imagine testing a phone that has two! Think of the checklist this device will have to pass before entering the market: Performance, compatibility, security, seamless user experience, processor speed, battery life, boot time, to name a few.
- New unforeseen security issues. As technology advances, testing will always become more complicated. Ensuring that two operating systems are secure will also be twice as complicated.
- Sharing programs between the different OS. As mentioned before, only those that are compatible with both operating systems can be shared. It’s a bit frustrating when you can’t run a program, yet you can click on it in the directory.
- Share your Hard Disk Drive. Essentially, you are cutting the hard drive space in half. If you are partitioning one HDD into two partitions, it is time consuming and once created, quite complicated to increase the size of one partition if necessary. Usually, it’s recommended to just install two hard drives anyway.
- User friendly? For the not-so-tech-savy, this phone is not so friendly.
The incident with Huawei is not an isolated one. This past year, Asus also faced pressure from Google and Microsoft to “indefinitely postpone” plans to sell their tablet equipped with Android and Windows OS.
It seems as if the dual-OS concept is being dismantled altogether, especially when it comes to Windows and Android.
What other testing challenges would you have expected from the dual-OS phone? Do you wish it was still being launched? Tell us why in the comment section below.