A Xiaomi mod has started a poll asking whether MIUI should be based on Huawei's Harmony OS instead of Google's Android

These are pretty rough times for Huawei. The Chinese tech giant who was poised to take the world has since been relegated to its home market.

This, because new Huawei devices are no longer equipped with Google Play Services, a very important pillar for users in the rest of the world.

And the hits just keep coming. Huawei has been barred from having Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC, build anything for them.

Down but not out, we’ve seen Huawei go on the offensive, building its own operating system, HarmonyOS. We should see the first devices running HarmonyOS sometime in 2021.

In a move that can be seen as another Chinese company warming up to its afflicted homie, we recently saw reports suggesting Xiaomi too was thinking of ditching Android.

While those reports have since been trashed, the seed has already been planted and many have started thinking, what if?

Recently, a Xiaomi forum moderator ran a poll on the community platform asking users how they’d feel about MIUI based on HarmonyOS.

Interestingly, a good number of people are voting against Android. The points being put across are pretty insightful as well.

For instance, users are citing the Apple-Google monopoly in terms of app distribution. Having a worthy competitor with an equally formidable App Gallery would devolve this situation.

Another section is citing Google’s flaky history with security and privacy policies arguing that any other platform would be better for user privacy.

The over-dependence on Google for users in the global market has also been cited as a reason Xiaomi might want to base its MIUI on a different operating system.

Many of the users against the thought of Xiaomi ditching Android altogether for Huawei’s HarmonyOS are citing the over-dependence on Google as the main hurdle.

Also, since Xiaomi’s MIUI is known to push ads to its devices, that doesn’t speak to the whole privacy concerns, at least not any more than anyone can fault Google for.

This is an interesting debate but since Xiaomi made it clear that they don’t plan to ditch Android, there might not be anything to write home about.

Huawei’s HarmonyOS is still in development and we have a tracker that is dedicated to keeping tabs on all the early info we could garner.

Xiaomi partnering with Huawei is an exciting proposition, but one we might never see.

How would you feel about it though? Share with us in the comment section below.

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