A user on the Bilibili platform successfully installed the HarmonyOS 6 operating system on a OnePlus Ace 5 smartphone. The device now identifies itself as a Huawei Mate 80 Pro in the system settings.
The modified device demonstrates functional system animations, wallpapers, a side shortcut bar, and support for application windows. The developer also reported a successful fix for the GPU performance on this hardware.
The installed software is the proprietary HarmonyOS 6 version pre-installed on Huawei devices, rather than the open-source OpenHarmony project. However, the current build lacks support for HMS drivers and Wi-Fi functionality.
The OnePlus Ace 5, released in December 2024, features the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 mobile platform. The experiment has sparked discussions regarding the potential to port HarmonyOS to older Huawei flagship models.
