Huawei takes the wraps of Watch GT, ditches Wear OS for long battery life
After months of leaks, Huawei has finally made its Galaxy Watch competitor official. Watch GT is essentially a fitness tracker disguised as a smartwatch. It packs a new operating system and two weeks of battery life. The company has also taken the wraps off the new Huawei Band 3 Pro.
Huawei Watch GT
There is actually very little that hasn’t already been said about the Huawei Watch GT. And it seems that most of the leaks were spot on. As predicted, Huawei has decided to scrap the Google Wear OS in favor of its own software called LightOS.
The timepiece comes with a 316L stainless steel case that houses two side buttons and a round 1.39 inch AMOLED screen (454 x 454 pixel resolution). In terms of size, its fairly large measuring 46.5 mm in diameter but only 10.6 mm thick.
Essential reading: Top fitness trackers and health gadgets
Under the hood there’s the custom ARM Cortex-M4 and not the typical Qualcomm Snapdragon. The wearable has a plethora of sensors including an accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, optical heart rate sensor, ambient light sensor and barometer. There’s also built-in GPS/GLONASS/GALILEO support and NFC for mobile payments.
The multiple sensors ensure you’ll get pretty much everything you need for 24/7 activity tracking. This includes a sleep tracking system, TruSleep, which is capable of identifying common sleep related issues. Huawei says this was developed in collaboration with Harvard Medical School. The watch also uses Truseen 3.0 heart rate monitoring, which employs six LEDs and self-learning algorithms for more efficient measurements.
The biggest news, however, is the battery life. The 420 mAh Lithium Ion battery will keep the watch ticking for up to a month when heart rate monitoring is switched off, and an impressive 22 hours with GPS switched on. With heart rate monitoring on and when exercising for 90 minutes per week you can expect to watch to stay alive for around 14 days.
This is really great but keep in mind that the awesome battery life is partly due to the stripped back operating system. Its probably more precise to say this is a fitness watch with some smart functions than a fully fledged smartwatch.
Watch GT is compatible with both iOS and Android smartphones, with fitness and other stats logged through the Huawei Health app. You can purchase it out on Amazon or huawei.com.
Huawei Band 3 Pro
The tech giant also took the wraps off a new fitness tracker called the Huawei Band 3 Pro. The gizmo carries much of the fitness functionality of the smartwatch including GPS, water-resistance, detailed sleep tracking, training stats including including VO2 max and recovery times.
In terms of design there’s a an 0.95 inch AMOLED color touchscreen with 120 x 240 pixel resolution, encased in a soft silicone strap wristband. This measures 45mm (span of main body) × 19 mm (width) × 11 mm (maximum thickness of the main body). The whole thing weighs only 25 grams.
Again, battery life is excellent. This multi-sport fitness tracker will last up to 20 days between charges, or a full month in standby mode. Check it out on Amazon.
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