Huawei’s time to win
The Chinese giant has outsmarted Google in the watch supremacy war, writes
It’s a year since Google slammed the door on the Chinese electronics giant Huawei, in the continuing fallout from the trade war with the US. It meant that Huawei’s flagship phones would in future not be able to access many of the Android apps that everyone takes for granted.
But the boycott works both ways and, in a less-publicised consequence of the deteriorating relationship between the two companies, it’s Huawei that is keeping Google literally at arm’s length.
The Chinese firm had in recent years been behind some of the best Android smartwatches – elegant pieces of jewellery which contained some of the innards of a mobile phone and could serve as a remote control for one.
They were powered by Android Wear, Google’s slimmed-down version of the operating system it makes for phones. But they’re not any longer. Huawei has decided it can do better and has taken a cue from Samsung, Garmin, Fitbit and others in developing a system of its own to take on the better-known Apple line of watches.
It is a wise decision, for while Android Wear embodies many of the benefits of Android phones, it also carries over a very significant disadvantage: a battery that needs charging every day.
Huawei claims the battery on its latest watch, the GT2, can last up to a fortnight. The same is true of the 46cm Honor Magic Watch, which it also makes.
Yet it shares with its Android predecessor an LED screen that can change faces with your mood: digital one minute and a Rolex-style analogue dial the next.