WE went to China and got a glimpse of Europe instead.
Our recent trip to Shenzhen, China, had three highlights. First was the Huawei Developers Conference (HDC) where the HarmonyOS was announced. The next was our tour of the Huawei Production Facility and Huawei University in Dongguan, while the third will remain a secret—for now.
It’s not everyday that you get a chance to tour the facilities of the second-biggest smartphone company in the world and see just how much effort they put into manufacturing and research and development.
We went to one of their production facilities where Huawei devices are assembled and we were even required to wear lab gowns, which I think is more for the protection of the equipment. Did you know that a new P30 comes out of the assembly line every 28 seconds?
Huawei facilities in Shenzhen and nearby Dongguan are massive, even by Chinese standards, and you’ll see a lot of signs pointing to a Huawei logo instead of a street name. I remember thinking why they were holding a big event like
the HDC in a basketball center, only to find out that the Dongguan Basketball Center was actually even bigger than the Mall of Asia Arena.
We stayed at the Amber Hotel for the first couple of days and it overlooked the Huawei Campus, a.k.a. the Ox Horn Campus, and the first time I saw it all I could think of was Hogwarts and Harry Potter.
Huawei’s new campus is in Songshan Lake Dongguan, a city in China’s province of Guangdong. The city is just north of Shenzhen, where Huawei’s main headquarters are located. Its called the Ox Horn Campus because of the pointed shape of the site. In Chinese, the campus is called Xi Liu Bei Po, which translates to “leeward slope with streams and brooks.”
Construction of the campus began in September 2014 and is worth 10 billion yuan ($1.5 billion). It can house around 25,000 staff and covers 9 square kilometers (about 3.5 square miles) of land. The sprawling Huawei campus comprises various facilities for factories, business and employee housing.
Unlike other tech companies which often boast of futuristic offices and architectural designs, Huawei decided to go for a more historical look, incorporating classic European architecture as the theme for their campus.
The company said the theme represents the world’s classic landmarks and the accumulated wisdom and essence of humanity for hundreds of years, recording a history of failures and successes.
It is easy to be overwhelmed by the size of the place and even easier to get lost in the magnificence of how each structure was meticulously built to resemble old European buildings. It’s like a theme park but without the rides (except for the train that goes around campus).
It’s a testament to how much the company has grown since Huawei’s founder, Ren Zhengfei, a former People’s Liberation Army engineer, started the company in 1987 with just three staff members and the equivalent of £4,000, to becoming a $100-billion company.
Huawei is the world’s biggest maker of telecommunications equipment and the second-largest smartphone manufacturer, behind only Samsung.
The campus is divided into 12 separate blocks or “towns.” Each section is modeled after various landmarks in Europe with historical significance including:
1. Verona: The story of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet was set in Verona. This area of the campus was designed to bring about an atmosphere of the Italian saying “la belle vita” (a beautiful life).
2. Cesky Krumlove: Named a Unesco world heritage site in 1992. It was inspired by the charm and rich history of Czech town of Krumlov, and this section was built to invigorate the senses.
3. Freiburg: A historic town in Switzerland replicated to simulate the tranquility of Freiburg.
4. Heidelberg: The construction of this site draws on one of Germany’s most ancient universities embodying a vibrant mixture of tradition and modernity.
5. Burgundy: One of France’s most famous wine producing regions and one of Europe’s most historically and culturally rich regions.
6. Bologna: This area features elegant renaissance pillars, colonnades and a Gothic church. Bologna is known for being one of Italy’s best places to live in, with a strong industrial tradition and highly developed welfare systems.
7. Windermere: This area of the campus draws on the style of the Lake District, England’s largest National Park, and it provides a dreamy, refreshing atmosphere.
8. Luxembourg: One of the greatest capitalist trading nations despite being a small country, the traits of resilience and success informed the construction of this site.
9. Bruges: Known to be one of Belgium’s oldest and most beautiful cities, the standout attractions of this site are the bell tower and the arched stone bridges which create a human environment in harmony with its natural surroundings.
10. Oxford: A place for the pursuit of excellence, this block inspires the quest for deeper insights and better technology.
11. Grenada: Draws on Spanish and Arabic styles for a unique amalgam of East and West, signifying a union of different cultures.
12. Paris: This area takes its style from emblematic Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris, and is home to Huawei’s R&D teams.
One of the biggest features of the campus is the massive castle that sits over a man-made lake. This Huawei castle was inspired the Heidelberg Castle in Germany. There’s also a replica on campus of the Freedom Bridge in Budapest, Hungary. There’s also an area where you can see black swans that apparently represent “non-complacency within the corporate culture.”
To get employees and guests like us around the massive campus and between the different towns, Huawei has its own bright red train that circles the campus. Brenda, our guide, said it takes 22 minutes to do one complete lap of the place by tram.
We had lunch at one of their exclusive cafeterias, and again unlike the “cafeteria” I had in mind, the place was an entire building with rows of restaurants, much like what we see in the mall, with various dining options from casual to fine dining and private rooms.
Sadly we weren’t able to explore inside the buildings as there were a lot of activities happening all over campus with the ongoing Huawei Developers Conference. But hopefully, we would get a chance the next time.
EMUI 10: Enabling Smart Life in all scenarios
ALONG side HarmonyOS, Huawei also showcased the next evolution in its UI as it released the EMUI 10.
Dr. Wang Chenglu, president of the Software Engineering Department at Huawei Consumer Business Group, said that EMUI 10 is pioneering distributed technology applications for providing an all-scenario experience. Its development has enabled scenario-specific applications, such as audio and video calls in all scenarios, business tasks across devices, and smart vehicle-mounted devices. In the same stroke, one-time development for multi-device deployment can reduce costs, improve efficiency, and provide users with an all-scenario smart experience.
EMUI 10 brings three updates: UX design, an all-scenario ultimate experience and a new standard of smooth operation.
EMUI 10 adds adaptive dark mode, which means it can “force” other apps to switch to dark mode to bring more visual comfort. The dark mode optimizes both color contrast between texts and dark backgrounds, as well as the color of texts and system icons, and the end result ensures visual consistency, comfort and legibility.
So far, the visual changes in EMUI 10 aren’t too different from the current version but there are subtle changes that you’ll notice the more you use it. There are now several choices for AlwaysOnDisplay (AOD) which also changes color to reflect the time of the day.
The quick settings dropdown has also been tweaked with a new black gradient effect and larger icons. Huawei’s gesture navigation is still here, and works the same as before but the task switching animation is a bit snappier now, with a more appropriate “bounce”.
Huawei will also be using the Morandi color gradient throughout the EMUI interface, as well as design tweaks to some of Huawei’s built-in apps.
The new EMUI 10 camera app also receives a much needed refresh, and you’ll see the mode displayed in large letters when you switch to a different mode. Unfortunately, I’m not much of a fan of how the zoom gestures have changed. The change I like most, however, is the new “magazine”-inspired layout, especially in the highlights option of the gallery app. Unlike now where you just see it in a grid, in EMUI 10 it gets a more pleasing layout with different sized thumbnails.
EMUI 10 adopts revolutionary distributed technology to support HD video calls among multiple devices. Users can make audio and video calls whenever and wherever they are. If there is an incoming call, users can choose to answer using a smart speaker. Or if it is a video call, they can answer through a TV, vehicle-mounted device, or even send a real-time video feed from a drone so that friends and family can also enjoy the beautiful scenery. At work, a smartphone and computer can share screens so that data can be exchanged easily through drag-and-drop.
Huawei continuously pays attention to security. In addition to improve product experience, it also builds a distributed all-scenario security system. It fortifies an in-depth security defense system by using in-house hardware and software, and uses a chip system architecture and system kernel as a foundation for security and trust.
In the future era of multiple scenarios and multiple devices, application developers need to change when the requirements are changed. As stated at the launch event, EMUI provides a distributed UI programming framework and virtualizes hardware capabilities. As a result, developers can create apps for multiple devices without needing to make adaptations for the same program.
EMUI exhibits its capability in driving the industry and facilitating ecosystem development.
In recent years, the number of Huawei mobile phone users has increased significantly. Huawei shipped 100 million units in just five months this year, and in the future, EMUI will provide more applications and synergized cross-device experiences for users.
The Huawei P30 series will be the first to upgrade to the EMUI 10 Beta version this September and will roll out for the Mate 20 series soon after.