BharOS: Everything you need to know about India's Indigenous OS

An IIT Madras incubated firm, JandK Operations has announced a new operating system for mobile phones called BharOS. BharOS is said to be a privacy-focused operating system that will be made available to commercial off-the-shelf handsets.

The new OS is claimed to be indigenous and also reinforces Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’. However, is the OS truly indigenous? Let’s have a look at what the BharOS has to offer.

What is BharOS?

BharOS is an India-made operating system that is claimed to be privacy-centric and indigenous.

What phones will boot on BharOS?

The developers haven’t revealed with whom they plan to partner, however, BharOS will be provided to organizations having stringent security and privacy requirements.

What are the features of BharOS?

• BharOS will be privacy-focused, which means it won’t allow for any third-party app downloads, for instance, installs from Google’s Play Store. Instead, it will have its own Private app store services (PASS).
• PASS will offer curated apps that meet the security and privacy standards of the organization.
• BharOS will come with no default apps (NDA), which will offer flexibility to users for downloading the apps of their choice from PASS.
• As for updates, devices with BharOS will receive native over-the-air (NOTA) updates. The updates will be automatically downloaded on the phone so users do not have to manually install and apply the update. This is similar to how it is on Android.

What’s the basis of BharOS?

Although BharOS is claimed to be indigenous, it will be based on Android Open-Source Project (AOSP).

Will BharOS replace Android?

Currently, there are limited details to answer the question. However, it is to be noted that BharOS is based on AOSP. AOSP itself is based on some Android version, and so it is maintained by Google. Google offers regular security backports for AOSP.

So to answer shortly, it won’t replace Android. But if as claimed the OS is for enterprises, it can be used as an alternative to the actual Android system.

But again, since there’s limited information available, it’s unclear how frequently the developers of BharOS manage to send updates to phones.

Will BharOS offer Android-like usability features?

The developers of the BharOS have revealed the phones running the OS won’t have default apps. But as for features, there’s nothing that we know, as of now.

Will it offer Android-like Privacy dashboard, personalization options, and battery health features? These questions are yet to be answered.

With all that said, BharOS doesn’t seem to be a truly indigenous OS, at least for now. But we’ll see as we learn more when the OS finally materializes.