“Someday you will look back at your struggling days and feel proud of what you have achieved”: Indian ‘Operating System’ - BharOS developed at IIT Madras is a Mobile Operating System built on top of AOSP and is more secure & private than Android and iOS
India has been planning to develop its own operating system to take on widely used Android and iOS. This motive seems to have seen fruition as IIT Madras has come up with the privacy-focused BharOS as part of PM Narendra Modi’s Atmanirbhar Bharat initiative.
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BharOS an indigenous mobile operating system developed by IIT Madras seems to have caught a lot of attention across the globe. Ashwini Vaishnaw, Electronics and IT Minister Govt of India tested the same and has shared his feedback on BharOS.
According to the Minister of Electronics and IT, the challenge starts from here and we have to be confident in developing an indigenous mobile operating system, and difficulties will come from across the world. He even said that “people don’t want any system like this to succeed”, possibly hinting at the big players like Apple and Google, which control the major share of the mobile operating system.
He says that India has to be “very careful, very conscious, and very persistent,” and we should continuously work to make it successful and we should prepare ourselves for the same. He also suggests that adding “a” to the name will make it Bharosa which means trust in Hindi. As per the photo shared by AINS, IT Minister seems to be testing the BharOS on a Pixel 6a or the Pixel 7, powered by the Tensor processor.
For those who are unaware, BharOS is a mobile operating system built on top of AOSP (Android open source project) and is said to be more secure and private when compared to Google’s Android and iOS. BharOS does not include any first-party apps and will support private app stores, allowing users to install and use apps of their choice.
BharOS is said to benefit over 100 million smartphone users in India, and IIT Madras is also in talks with OEMs to launch phones with BharOS in the future. Right now, the BharOS is still in the early testing phase, and the team behind BharOS will further test and develop it to make it a more stable and secure mobile operating system.
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IIT Madras Develops BharOS to Rival Android and iOS
IIT Madras-incubated company JandK Operations (JandKops) has introduced the indigenous BharOS, which will be available for commercial off-the-shelf phones. The OS is meant for privacy and security and has no default apps (NDA). This means that it won’t require people to use any pre-installed apps. This will also help users get more control over the app permissions and only provide the apps with data access permissions if they trust them.
Prof. V. Kamakoti, Director, IIT Madras, during a press conference, said, “BharOS Service is a Mobile Operating System built on a foundation of trust, with a focus on providing users more freedom, control, and flexibility to choose and use only the apps that fit their needs. This innovative system promises to revolutionize the way users think about security and privacy on their mobile devices.“
The operating system will also provide native over-the-air updates (NOTA), which will be automatically downloaded and installed on the device without the requirement of any manual work. This process will ensure that the devices running BharOS have the latest update and security patches.
Plus, BharOS will provide access to apps only via organization-specific Private App Store Services (PASS). The apps will be thoroughly checked for security standards when they are a part of PASS so that users know they are downloading the safe ones. JandKops’ Director, Karthik Ayyar, said that “With NDA, PASS, and NOTA, BharOS ensures that Indian mobile phones are trustworthy.“
It is revealed that BharOS is currently being provided to firms that have ‘stringent privacy and security requirements.’ There’s no word on when this will reach the generic user, though. More information should be out once the OS is broadly available.
The initiative to introduce a homegrown OS will help India rival Android and iOS, which have taken up the majority of the market share. Although, only time will tell how good a product this becomes. Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
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