Huawei has released cheap smart TVs on its own OS (Harmony OS) without Android

Huawei has released the trio of smart TV X1 series under the subsidiary brand Honor. They run on the Harmony OS platform, which Huawei has developed to replace Android.

Huawei has shown the new smart TVs of the X1 Smart TV line, which it will be releasing under its subsidiary brand Honor. The main distinguishing feature of the new products is the lack of an Android TV OS, instead of which Huawei uses the Harmony OS platform of its own design, which is created specifically to replace Android.

For Huawei, Honor X1 Smart TVs are not the first based on their own firmware. Her debut took place on August 9, 2019, and the first TVs based on it were the 55-inch Honor Smart Screen and Smart Screen Pro, shown on August 12, 2019.

The Honor X1 Smart TV series consists of three models with diagonals of 50, 55 and 65 inches. The first country in which they appear on sale will be China, and their release will take place on May 25, 2020. On the same day in India, CNews reported, the premiere of smart TV Realme TV will be held, which, like the entire line of Xiaomi Redmi TV, will compete with the latest Huawei products.

Huawei now has five TVs with Harmony OS — Huawei now has five TVs with **Harmony OS**

At the time of publication of the material, the Chinese vendor did not disclose the cost of the younger model Honor X1 Smart TV. A 55-inch TV in China will cost about 2,300 yuan (23.6 thousand rubles at the Central Bank rate on May 19, 2020), and the price of the older model on the day of release will be 3300 yuan (33.8 thousand rubles). Huawei is currently taking pre-orders for these TVs.

Frameless screen and many “improvements”

According to the developers, all three Honor X1 Smart TVs support 4K resolution of 3840×2160 pixels. They did not name the thickness of the frames but specified that the display in each of the three televisions occupies 94% of the front panel area.

To improve the quality of the picture, the Honor X1 Smart TV has a proprietary artificial intelligence technology that works in conjunction with MEMS – motion compensation technology that eliminates the blur effect of fast-moving objects in the frame. For the trio, DCI-P3 colour space coverage is claimed within 92% (at the level of professional monitors).

Honor X1 Smart TV implements several original hardware and software features

TV displays received a standard aspect ratio of 16: 9 and DC Dimming technology – due to this, a reduction in the flicker of the backlight is achieved, which reduces the harmful effects on the eyes when watching TV for a long time. Honor X1 Smart TV can be installed on a complete stand or hang on the wall.

Fine-tuned sound and a powerful processor

The Honor X1 Smart TV has a sound system of four 10-watt speakers. This is a pretty good indicator – in the same Realme, the sound power will be 24 watts, in addition, Huawei has a new feature for fine-tuning the sound. It is implemented programmatically using a 31-band equalizer, and additionally, the sound can be improved by activating Huawei Histen’s proprietary technology.

The developers also mentioned two separate sound cameras with a volume of 0.5 litres each for the implementation of surround sound. To process voice requests and commands, TVs have an array of six microphones.

The image from the TV can be broadcast to a smartphone and back via Wi-Fi

The basis of Honor X1 Smart TVs is the Honghu 818 processor, the same as last year’s Honor Smart Screen. This is a 4-core ARM chip with a clock frequency of 1.5 GHz, the capabilities of which are enough to smoothly decode not only 4K video but also 8K clips with a frequency of 30 frames per second due to the integrated 4-core video subsystem Mali G51. The cores in Hongjun 818 are divided into two clusters – the first consists of two energy-efficient ARM Cortex-A53 cores, and the second includes a pair of high-performance Cortex-A73 cores.

The Hongjun 818 also includes the HiSilicon Hi3516DV300 neural module. The processor works with 2 GB of RAM, and the capacity of the built-in drive in each of the three TVs is 16 GB.

Additional features

Harmony OS installed in the Honor X1 Smart TV is a modular platform that can be quickly adapted to the type of device in which it will work. For example, in the version for TVs, she received a proprietary interface, support for widgets and applications, as well as the possibility of enhanced interaction with smartphones. For example, on a mobile gadget, you can broadcast everything that is displayed on the TV screen – the function is useful, including when you need to move away from the TV, but do not want to miss an important point, for example, in broadcasting a sports event.

All three new Honor TVs have HDMI 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports, an Ethernet network interface, a DTMB digital TV tuner, and an antenna input. The list of wireless interfaces includes Wi-Fi 802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5) and Bluetooth 5.0.