2015 Mobile World Congress, the world’s largest trade show for the mobile industry, began yesterday in Barcelona lifting the veil off the smartphones and tech products that you’ll soon find in the markets. Chinese company Huawei unveiled its first Android Wear device, unimaginatively branded as the Huawei Watch, at the MWC. Ahead of its official debut, the round smartwatch was previewed through a pair of videos, and we must say it’s the best-looking Android Wear-powered device we have seen till date. Rather than a geeky-gadget design, the smartwatch appears to have a rather premium pedigree. With a circular dial set in a sleek stainless steel casing, minimal ornamentation and a very slim bezel, the Huawei Watch is reminiscent of a luxury timepiece.
The Huawei Watch is the first Android Wear watch with a sapphire crystal, even beating Apple watch to it. Underneath it, the smartwatch features a 286-ppi 1.4-inch AMOLED display, with a 42mm round face making it among the smallest of the current generation. Watch is encased in a ‘cold-forged’ scratch-resistant stainless steel housing, available in gold, silver and black finishes. In terms of feature, it will offer a built-in heart rate monitor, 4GB of onboard storage, 512MB of RAM, the standard loadout of motion sensors for activity and health tracking, and Bluetooth LE for device pairing.
Huawei says the watch has been designed with personalization in mind; it offers more than 40 unique watch faces to choose from and includes a full range of watchstraps made from different materials, and styles. The bands are standard 18mm, so you can easily swap them out. The Huawei Watch will come with a magnetic charging station for the users benefit. The Huawei Watch contains 130 components and it takes 260 manufacturing steps, 160 of which are done by hand. It is also the most watch-like Android wearable device we have seen, which might become a big deciding factor for prospective buyers. However, will it be able to give a tough competition to the upcoming Apple Watch? Well, only time will tell; nevertheless, Huawei has impressed up with their very first attempt at creating a premium smartwatch.
