NOW TRY THIS...
1 KEEP WATCHING
The Watch 3’s superpower over its competition is its Ultra-long Battery Life mode. Taking the stamina from three days to 14 by stripping back third-party app support and a few other bits, the convenience it adds when you know you’re going to be without a charger is stellar. To activate it, swipe down on the watch face, tap the settings icon, scroll down to Battery and toggle it on.
2 DON’T WORRY, BE APPY
What makes a smartwatch smart? Apps. And unlike the Huawei Watch GT series, this wearable supports third-party apps. There aren’t many to choose from yet (see panel), but here’s how to get hold of them. Open the Appgallery by clicking the digital crown and select the icon that looks like a red shopping bag; here you can browse featured apps or search using the teeny on-screen keys.
3 BE THERM BUT FAIR
This is the first smartwatch to feature a thermometer.
All you have to do to take your temperature is press the digital crown, tap on the thermometer icon and select Measure. You’ll see an on-screen reading of your temperature, which you can track using the Huawei Health app on your phone, along with heart rate, blood oxygen levels, stress, sleep and more.
4 GET A GOOD FIT
Like any modern smartwatch worth its salt, the Watch 3 is an exercise-monitoring powerhouse. With support for over 100 sports modes, it’ll use its sensors to keep tabs on all your activities. To fire up training tracking, just press the bottom button below the digital crown; then select your exercise, wait for the watch to lock on to your GPS coordinates if you’re outside, and hit ‘Start’.
5 CELIA FATE
This time Huawei’s bringing more integrated Celia support than we’ve seen on any of its wearables to date. Celia? Yes, Celia – Huawei’s voice assistant. It’s not the brightest spark, given it can’t make out voice commands like “Set timer for two minutes”, but it can be surprisingly useful. To activate Celia, swipe from left to right, tap the floating orb at the top of the screen and start talking.
6 GET OFF YOUR FACE
As long as you’re not in Ultra-long Battery Life mode, you can change your watch faces with ease through the Huawei Health smartphone app or on the watch itself. The default face is excellent and highly customisable, with four interactive elements that you can switch out to give shortcuts to your most used features; but a simple long-press of the watch face lets you pick another.