Six things you should know about the Huawei Watch
Introduction
Huawei's Watch has been a long time coming – it was officially announced at MWC 2015 at the start of March. Since then little else has been revealed, and we've been sitting patiently and twiddling our thumbs.
We got some brief hands-on time with an early version of the Watch at the show, but it wasn't running the final software and didn't deliver the full experience. That's was a bad idea in our book – the demo was clearly pushed out early in an attempt to make sure Huawei doesn't fall any further behind its rivals in the wearables stakes.
When we were invited to Huawei HQ in Shenzen, China, we thought it would be the perfect opportunity to find out more, so we dug around for the latest information on everything from the design to the launch date – here's what we discovered...
1. It's coming "very soon"
Huawei's Watch was announced more than six months ago now, and it still isn't adorning our wrists. Many observers are starting to suspect that there are some issues with the device, but it's more likely that the watch was just announced prematurely.
The fact that the devices at the launch weren't running any software at all suggests it was pushed through to the announcement stage a little early to make sure Huawei didn't fall any further behind its Android Wear competitors.
Wearable Product Design Manager at Huawei, Pan, told techradar: "Very soon you will see it in the market." So rumours of the Watch launching in the next few weeks seem to hold water – could we see something at IFA 2015?
2. It's still in testing
Even though we've heard the Huawei Watch will be launching in the near future, we know it's still going through the testing process. We managed to get some time around the Huawei testing facilities in Shenzen and in the environmental testing room we spotted a couple of hidden Huawei Watch displays.
On the other hand, it may be that the company is already working on the follow-up to the Huawei Watch and it's already hit the testing process.
There was no sign of the rest of the Watch housing, but these watch faces were inside a machine that drops the temperature from high to really low to see how the device handles the change.
According to Pan, Huawei Watch has gone through over 650 hours of quality testing to check that it's not going to get damaged easily.
3. No Emotion UI or OS tweaking
Huawei is all about customising the interface. Emotion UI on the phones is a bone of contention for some users with its different approach to Android design.
Those won't be available on the Watch OS though – it's strictly an Android Wear affair here. The unique look of Emotion UI isn't going to make the jump, and there won't be any big changes in the way you interact with the Huawei Watch compared with a Moto 360.
Pan told techradar: "To a certain extent we can customise but we can't go very deep, we provide the watch faces for people to choose."
4. Employees are already wearing them
In my few days exploring the Huawei campus I noticed a few people had some interesting wristwear. I know for certain that at least three employees around the factory and campus in general were wearing the Huawei Watch, although it wasn't clear how complete they were.
They may have been early builds, or could even be a new version of the Watch, but whenever we approached employees with questions on their choice of gadget they backed away, muttering that they couldn't talk about it.
5. Battery life is 2 to 3 days
Battery is a big concern on smartwatches, and the Huawei Watch is no exception. We now know there's a 300mAh cell under the hood, but there's no precise figure for how long that's going to last.
Pan told us: "I don't use it very heavily, so two or three days." That sounds like the average kind of Android Wear battery life, and it makes sense as it's a similar cell to those we've seen in other watches.
If you manage to get a full three days life out of the watch while actually using the screen, however, then we'd be impressed – that's unheard of so far.
6. It's been in development for years
Huawei hasn't just thrown the Watch out after no research at all – a representative confirmed to techradar it has been in development for over two years.
That means it was being developed before the general public even knew Android Wear was a thing – it wasn't announced until March 2014.
Huawei may have even started creating its own OS to run on the wearable before it knew Android Wear existed, and then decided to switch midway through the R&D process.