Users of the Huawei HarmonyOS system in mainland China continue to express their dissatisfaction with the slow updating and missing features of WeChat. Despite Tencent’s official response and internal podcasts explaining the challenges of development such as “rewriting from scratch” and the rapid iteration of the system, the user experience issues have not been resolved.
The core application of Huawei’s HarmonyOS system – WeChat, is experiencing problems, which has become a hot topic on social media. Many users complain that after upgrading to the latest version of HarmonyOS, they still see prompts to update the WeChat version when using certain mini-programs or H5 pages. This not only confuses them but also severely limits the usage of functions.
On social media, there is a flood of complaints about the slow updates and incomplete features of WeChat on the HarmonyOS version. Some netizens have pointed out that when using WeChat on the Harmony Next system, they feel that the iteration speed lags behind the Android or iOS versions, leading to many inconveniences. For example, a blogger named “Sales Skills” posted on January 13, stating that after the update, the WeChat experience was becoming “increasingly incomprehensible,” even encountering issues like blocked money transfer functions and the inability to paste copied Moments information, which resonated with many internet users.
This raises a question: Why is WeChat struggling on the HarmonyOS system?
In response to the widespread concerns and complaints from users, Tencent has finally publicly responded recently.
On July 3, Tencent’s official account “The Blackboard Report of the Goose Factory” posted an article introducing the progress of the new features of WeChat’s HarmonyOS version. The article concluded with an explanation that seemed somewhat self-pitying, “WeChat HarmonyOS version has always been highly anticipated. However, many friends may not understand that due to the unique architecture of the HarmonyOS system, the accumulated functions of WeChat over the past decade cannot be directly migrated and must be rewritten from scratch.”
To further support this view, Tencent even produced a podcast, inviting Anqi, the person in charge of basic functions of WeChat mobile version on HarmonyOS, Zuogang, the person in charge of basic functions development of WeChat computer version on HarmonyOS, and Xiao Jiang from the WeChat PR team as guests.
In the program, the WeChat team explained the two main core challenges in the development process:
The huge workload of “rewriting from scratch”: Xiao Jiang explained that the “native” features of the HarmonyOS system mean that it is no longer based on the open-source Android framework, but rather built on a completely new framework. This forces WeChat to “redevelop WeChat from scratch based on this.” Anqi also added that many core functions of WeChat “need to rebuild a lot of things from scratch.” This massive reconstruction project has consumed tremendous energy from the team.
The “rapid iteration” of the HarmonyOS system: Anqi pointed out that the HarmonyOS system is still in a period of rapid iteration, with various issues in the system itself, and frequent updates to API interfaces, sometimes with “two versions per month when it’s fast.” This means that the WeChat team needs to constantly adapt to new interfaces, and once faced with a “destructive” upgrade, the initial development investment may require a significant amount of rework, significantly slowing down progress.
Although the Tencent WeChat team has been claiming since March of this year that they have been continuously working on fixing software issues and optimizing functions over the past year, this direction of work will continue this year, however, specific release dates cannot yet be disclosed. WeChat team members, as part of the HarmonyOS users, also express a deep understanding of user dissatisfaction with missing functions and defects.
Faced with user anxiety and the realistic challenges of development, the progress of WeChat’s HarmonyOS version is destined to be difficult. When users will be able to experience WeChat on HarmonyOS with fully featured and smooth functionality like Android or iOS versions remains an unresolved question.