Thursday, March 28, 2024

Huawei Watch GT hands-on: Huawei’s Galaxy Watch competitor

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Today, the Huawei Mate 20 and Huawei Mate 20 Pro were announced. Alongside these brand new phones, the company also unveiled its new Huawei Watch GT smartwatch.

At first glance, the Watch GT may look like a Wear OS smartwatch, but it’s a actually a competitor to Wear OS and Apple Watch. The Watch GT runs on Huawei’s own in-house platform LiteOS. Huawei didn’t tell us much about LiteOS, but from our short time with it, it appears to offer many of the same features as other wearable platforms, like exercise tracking, custom watch faces, and notifications.  We’ll have to wait to see how well it stacks up against other wearable platforms.

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Samsung Galaxy Watch review: The smartwatch that tries to do it all

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With the Watch GT, Huawei had two goals. It wanted to create a smartwatch that looks like a normal watch and has a long lasting battery. The company says the watch will last up to 22 hours on a single charge, with continuous exercise tracking, GPS, heart rate monitoring, and the screen turned on at all times. More impressively, Huawei says the watch will last two weeks on a single charge with heart rate monitoring and 90 minutes of exercise tracking per week. That’s only the middle point of what Huawei is shooting for though. If you only use the watch for messages and calls with heart rate monitoring and GPS turned off, Huawei says the Watch GT will last 30 days.

This all sounds great on paper, but we’ll have to wait and see if it actually lives up to these claims once we get our hands on one for review.



The Huawei Watch GT is quite attractive, offering a classic and elegant design. The watch case is made of 316L stainless steel, with a ceramic bezel on the front and two sizable crowns on the side for interacting with the OS. The Watch GT is 10.6mm thick which made it feel very sleek and less bulky than something like Samsung’s Galaxy Watch. Its a 1.39-inch circular AMOLED display felt large enough for comfortable touchscreen interaction.

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Other specifications for the watch include an altimeter, which is great for hiking, and a heart rate sensor on the back. The heart rate sensor uses what Huawei calls Truseen 3.0 heart rate monitoring, which employs six LEDs and self-learning algorithms for a more efficient and accurate real-time measurement. The watch will learn where it sits on your wrist to get a more accurate reading.

The processor inside uses a double chipset architecture, a low-speed chip for low power consumption and a high-speed chip for more powerful tasks. The AI on board will switch between the two cores depending on what tasks you’re doing to conserve battery or deliver more power. There’s a  low consumption mode for sleeping or other sedentary activities, and a normal mode for activities like swimming, running, or hiking.

Right now, we’re not sure about Huawei Watch GT’s price or availability details, but we’ll update this article as we learn more. We hope Huawei will price this watch competitively, but devices like the Apple Watch and Galaxy Watch cost a pretty penny. Expect to pay a few hundred dollars.

Huawei Band 3 Pro

Huawei Band 3 Pro Hands On

Huawei Band 3 Pro Hands On
Huawei Band 3 Pro Hands On

Huawei also took the wraps off a new fitness tracker called the Huawei Band 3 Pro. This multi-sport fitness tracker will last up to 20 days on a single charge, or a full month in standby mode. It’s built with runners, swimmers, and cyclists in mind, and the internal specs and features reflect that. The Band 3 Pro comes with a built-in GPS, multiple swimming modes, and personalized exercise tracking and training modes.

We don’t have price or availability details for the Huawei Band 3 Pro either, but Huawei has traditionally priced its fitness trackers very aggressively. Last year’s Band 2 cost only $70.

Be sure to check out all of Huawei’s other new products at the links below:

  • Huawei Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro announced
  • Huawei Mate 20 specs
  • Huawei Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro hands-on
  • Top Huawei Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro features

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