Huawei Watch GT
THIS SMARTWATCH DROPS WEAR OS FOR LONGER BATTERY.
THE FIRST TWO Huawei Watch products were a big part of the initial success of the Android Wear operating system, so it came as a surprise when the company backed away from Google’s wearable platform for the Huawei Watch GT. Instead the company decided to use its own software for its latest smartwatch.
The Watch GT has pared back software to increase battery life, and the good news is that this has worked – although at the cost of compromises elsewhere. This is a thin and light smartwatch with a full-colour display, and we found it comfortable to wear throughout our time using it; we also had compliments on how the watch looked on our wrist.
The design is similar to that of the Huawei Watch 2, although it is slimmer. It’s 10.6mm thick, and that helps it to sit on your wrist comfortably, without weighing it down like some smartwatches can. There’s a 1.39-inch AMOLED display, which we found to be bright and clear. All of your stats appear clearly on the display, and it’s easy to interact with the touchscreen.
There are two buttons on the right-hand side of the watch that enable you to navigate around its interface when you’re not using the touchscreen itself. The top button works to wake the watch and then take you back to the main menu, while the lower one is designed for you to set up your own shortcuts. This enables you to easily boot up your favourite apps without having to head into the main menu, which is useful if you’re often running with the watch.
There’s no support for third-party apps, that could still change, but at the moment what you see on the Watch GT is what you get.
What you do get includes lots of fitness tech, and customisable watch faces and notifications – but apart from that it’s quite limited. For example, there’s no Google Pay support here, as there’s no NFC chipset or supporting software on the watch.
The Huawei app on your iOS or Android phone connects you to the watch and allows you to choose your specific settings, such as which apps send notifications through to your wrist. We found ourselves setting this up, and then not using the app again much. Battery life is where the Watch GT gets truly exciting though. Huawei believes this watch should be able to last almost a whole month on a single charge, and we found exactly that in our testing, with the GT dropping to 50% after around two weeks of use. We then recharged the watch, and after 10 days of solid use we found it still had 72% left in the tank.
The Watch GT is designed for those looking for a fitness-focused device that also looks good on the wrist – and if that’s all you want you’ll likely be a fan of the Watch GT, as it offers an accurate heart rate tracker, fast GPS and a lot of tracking modes in a premiumlooking package.
Huawei isn’t sure if this will be sold separately in Australia yet, but if you by a Huawei Mate 20 Pro smartphone from Optus before March 31, or bought one from Vodafone before Feb 4 or JB Hifi before Feb 28, then you get a free Watch GT as long as you claim it by March 24th.
[ JAMES PECKHAM ]