There are two versions, 46 and 42mm, the larger packs a 1.39-inch always-on AMOLED display with 454 x 454 resolution while the smaller one will stick to 1.2-inch 390x390 AMOLED screen.
The new Kirin A1 chipset brings in the Bluetooth 5 support as well as BLE 5.1 and promises up to 150-meter connection, but this would have to be in an ideal case. While Huawei was slim on the K1 details, the new chipset should bring lower power consumption. The battery life of fourteen days sounds impressive, and the watch is running lite OS and has 16MB RAM for the 42mm version and 32MB RAM for 46mm version. Both pack 4GB of storage.
The watch uses an all-in-one 3D glass screen, creating a wider, boundless display for the OLED 1.39 screen on the bigger one.
The Kirin A1 chipset brings an advanced Bluetooth processing unit, a powerful audio processing unit, an ultra-low power consumption application processor, and a separate power management unit. The SoC uses ARM Cortex M7 processor capable of ultra-low power consumption of 10uA/MHz. Huawei claims that this is far below the industry average of 30uA/MHz.
The two weeks battery
Two weeks battery life should be achievable with both the intelligent heart rate monitor and call notification functions on and weekly usage of up to 30 minutes of Bluetooth calls; up to 30 minutes of music playback; up to 90 minutes of exercise and using the scientific sleep mode at night. Naturally, the actual battery life will depend on practical real-life use. The Huawei Watch GT 2 42mm series can operate continuously for up to one week and comes with a significantly smaller battery. The actual battery size for the 42mm is 215 mAh while the bigger 46mm watch has more than double, 455 mAh. With that in mind, it does not come as a surprise that numbers significantly drop for the 42mm version.
The new watch brings improvement in GPS mode compared to the previous generation. The 46mm series achieves a battery life of 30 hours under the GPS tracked sports mode, while the 42mm series reaches 15 hours.
The support for Bluetooth calls and Bluetooth music piqued our interest. With onboard storage of 2GB one can store up to 500 songs (4 MB each). The watch also packs a heart rate sensor, GPS as well as a gyroscope. Beware, only the bigger 46mm version packs a speaker and a microphone.
Fitness and health
In the sports mode, Huawei Watch GT 2 is compatible with 15 sports, including eight outdoor sports (running, walking, climbing, hiking, trail running, cycling, open water, triathlon) and seven indoor sports (walking, running, cycling, swimming pool, free training, elliptical machine, rowing machine).
For these 15 sports modes, the watch provides full-scale monitoring of approximately 190 types of data. The GT2 watch provides targeted pre-exercise data analysis for different sports, data recording analysis during the exercise and professional advice afterward. It is like having a personal intelligent sports coach to make your workout safer and better.
Huawei also plays big on the health management capability of the watch. Heart rate monitoring helps monitor bradycardia and heart failure. Unless in the sports mode, the user will be notified if heart rate is above 100 bpm or below 50 bpm for more than 10 minutes. Users can also view the data in the Huawei Sports and Health App to keep an eye on your health in real-time.
The watch comes with a sleep monitor. Huawei TruSleep 2.0 monitors sleep quality, real-time heart rate, sleep breathing quality, and uses big data analysis to rate sleep quality. The watch also comes with in house developed TruRelax technology, which helps users relieve stress by recording HRV (heart rate variability) values and providing feedback on the user's stress index.
The watch will remind you to stand up and move if you are too lazy and even trigger an alarm. The watch will help you track the number of steps you take each day, calories burned, and the number of times you stand up.
Apple bets big on its watch capability to help you stay healthy, and Huawei thinks that it should go down that path too. Richard Li the CEO of consumer business at Huawei has mocked Apple for its poor 0.75 day battery life (versus 14 days with Huawei Watch GT 2), 6 hours battery life in GPS (vs 30 hours at Huawei), 10 hours music play vs 24 hours at Huawei) and 5 hours Bluetooth call (vs 10 hours at Huawei).
You have to be clear that this is not the Android wear based watch and that you won't be able to install the apps from there, but the Huawei Watch GT 2 sounds like an exciting wearable.
The 46mm version will sell for €249 and the 42mm version for €229 and are expected in October.
