Huawei has unveiled two new smart televisions, the first products to use HarmonyOS, the company’s own operating system. The televisions will be available from August 15 in China and marks the first use of HarmonyOS, chief executive George Zhao said, adding that it will be marketed by its mid-range brand, Honor.
The Honor Vision and Honor Vision Pro come with a 55-inch 4K (3840×2160 pixels) display with NTSC 87 percent wide colour gamut, 16:9 aspect ratio, 60Hz refresh rate, 400nits brightness, and 178 degree viewing angles. The display also have German TUV Rheinland low blue-eye protection. The Smart TVs have a three-side bezel-less full-view design that with just 6.9mm thickness at the thinnest point and a diamond-patterned rear,.
Both Honor Vision models are powered by the Honghu 818 quad-core SoC paired with a Mali-G51 GPU and 2GB RAM. The processor is equipped with seven advanced image-processing technologies, including Motion Estimate and Motion Compensation (MEMC), High Dynamic Range Imaging (HDR), Super-Resolution (SR), Noise Reduction (NR), Dynamic Contrast Improvement (DCI), Auto Color Management (ACM) and Local Dimming (LD).
The Honor Vision TV offers 16GB of onboard storage, whereas the Honor Vision Pro TV comes with 32GB of onboard storage. They run on HarmonyOS 1.0, and connectivity options include Bluetooth v5, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, three HDMI ports, one USB 3.0 port, and one Ethernet port.
The Honor Vision Pro TV offers video calling at 1080p@30fps with the help of the popup camera, and has six far-field microphones for a seamless video calling experience. The popup camera can also be adjusted by 10 degree downwards. The Pro variant has six 10W speakers, while the Honor Vision has four 10W speakers only.
The Honor Vision and Honor Vision Pro can act as Smart Home hub and use elements of Magic UI 3.0 and EMUI 10 for AI capabilities. The Smart Screen devices can also show weather information, track packages, and a lot more. Additionally, the devices come with Honor Magic Link support, which will allow the users to remotely control their Honor Vision via their smartphone.
Users can share information, text notes, conduct video chats between the smart displays and smartphones seamlessly. With a starting price tag of 3,799 yuan (US$540), the Honor display is equipped with HiSilicon “Honghu 818” intelligent chipset and smart pop-up camera for large screens, allowing the users to operate the display through voice chat and enjoy personalised features driven by artificial intelligence, according to Zhao.
The main Huawei brand is expected to launch its own smart displays in September, one month after Honor’s product first hit the market.
Huawei unveiled its self-developed HarmonyOS operating system Friday which supports a range of products and systems within its own ecosystem, including smartphones, computers, tablets, TVs, automobiles and smart wear.
Migrating apps from Android to the new system is relatively easy but the company would prefer to continue using Google’s Android OS on its smartphones if allowed, Yu said during the launch of Harmony OS event on Friday.
