I've tried to lobby a few people with successful careers to pair their phones with a smartwatch. Even for those who know nothing about smartwatches, or even reject them, their eyes still light up when I mention heart rate, blood oxygen, sleep, and other relevant features that help them develop healthy habits.
And for those who have had some exposure to running watches in the past, many of them are tired of those professional running watches that are really professional but look like toys, and when they see smartwatches that are suitable for daily wear and have the professionalism of a running watch, their eyes are still filled with joy.
Mobile phone manufacturers are also working hard to educate the market by adding a smartwatch to their phones, not just because it's an accessory, but because it's an extension of the phone's sensing and functionality to help us better manage our daily activities and health.
Unlike headsets, smartwatches rely heavily on the phone's operating system and ecosystem, and the latest trend is that phone makers prefer to build watch operating systems based on the same underlying technology as the phone. So, to have a seamless experience, buy whatever brand of phone you have, unless his watch is not comprehensive in terms of intelligence.
And if you have a phone with Huawei Hongmeng OS, then the Huawei WATCH 3 will be the best choice among smartwatches for you.
It's got a lot going for it, so I'll start with the downsides:
It's heavy and has a big dial, and when you first get it in your hand, it's like getting a P40 Supercup, a little uncomfortable with the heaviness.
It's only suitable for men, and for women, we recommend Huawei's old GT 2 series, or other brands that are more suitable for women.
It can also only be paired with a Huawei Hongmeng phone for the best experience, and connecting to other non-Huawei Android or iOS phones doesn't bring out many of its advantages.
It doesn't have a thriving app ecosystem yet, and some of its Hongmeng Connected capabilities aren't live yet, including a control center for on-demand mobile audio content, and it's heavily reliant on Huawei Family Barrel.
What I'll tell you next is all about the watch's strengths, plus a few additional discoveries I've made about Huawei's sports and health ecosystems over the course of this time of use.
The Huawei WATCH 3 is considerably more expensive than the Huawei WATCH GT 2 and WATCH GT 2e. Priced at over $2,000, it's worth every penny in large part because of its excellent craftsmanship and materials.
The screen is a very high-quality OLED touch display that is very bright and sensitive to touch, and the curved edges make it feel very warm and comfortable in the hand. Parameters: 1.43 inches, 466x466 resolution, 326 PPI, 60Hz refresh rate, 1,000 nits peak brightness.
The large curvature mirror-designed surface is cold forged and hardened with a PVD coating process to resist minor daily abrasions and sweat corrosion. I've been using it "hard" for the past month or so, and the screen is still in mint condition.
The mirror-polished design continues from the face to the stainless steel bezel, and even the back is smooth ceramic, with the heart-rate monitoring sensor area in the center covered by a piece of sapphire glass. The perimeter mirror, polished in one piece, is exceptionally translucent. It's also better for wiping after contact with sweat or dust.
Circle focus - the rotating crown, which is the first use case for Huawei's smartwatch family. In fact, this rotating crown is not common in non-Apple Watch smartwatches.
For those unfamiliar with the fancy smartwatch interactions, this knob greatly lowers the barrier to use. It's like the Home button on a smartphone and solves a lot of problems in our operation.
Huawei WATCH 3's interactive animation is basically a reference to the Apple Watch, but the difference is that Huawei puts the 'Sports' app, in the center of the app center.
This center-to-surround visual experience is also reflected in the design of several function panels, up and down, left and right, in order. It's much clearer than the Apple Watch's top-down card-based scrolling display.
Slide right, service center / slide left, health center / pull down, settings / pull up, notifications / press the knob above, app center / press the button below, sports center
Huawei WATCH 3's interactive experience is superior, not only because of a high-quality display screen, a sensitive rotating crown, the display of the function of the board in an orderly manner, but also the configuration of hardware and software and performance optimization, so that the watch is not only a good display screen, a rotating crown, but also a good display of the function of the board, but also a good display of the function of the board. The performance is optimized to make the watch run very smoothly.
These two days Huawei has also just launched the function of intelligent gesture recognition, rub your fingers to open the payment QR code, clench your fist and then open it to answer the phone, flip your wrist to mute incoming calls - it seems to be the kind of black technology that can be shown once in a while! It's just that when you use it, you need to do some gesture practice in the settings, so that the watch learns first.
The Huawei WATCH 3 utilizes a dual-chip architecture that ensures smooth performance while taking into account battery life. It also supports detached charging and reverse charging of the phone for the watch, which are all plus points for this watch.
The highlight of Huawei WATCH 3 is the use of Hongmeng's Distributed Technology, which allows for seamless co-operation with the mobile ecosystem of your phone. While its predecessor, the Huawei WATCH GT 2 Pro, already used the Harmony system, the WATCH 3 is the first to use HarmonyOS animations at boot.
Hongmeng Connect provides multi-screen interaction for the watch. For example, you can use Baidu Maps to navigate on your phone while riding, set your destination, and then navigate on the watch side, lifting your wrist to see the direction of your destination route.
But the UI on the watch side of WATCH 3 is relatively simple, and doesn't have the kind of arrows and friendly animations and vibrations that the Apple Watch has.
With eSIM enabled, Huawei WATCH 3 can be used as a standalone device to answer calls, play music on demand, check the weather, do voice shorthand, and swipe your credit card with your wrist when you don't have your phone with you.
There aren't many third-party watch apps supported by the Huawei App Store, and there are probably only a dozen commonly used ones.
On the Hongmeng Connected experience, the most commonly used is the remote control to take photos, which is more suitable for people who love to take selfies. Open the photo app on the Huawei watch, you can activate the front camera of the Huawei phone, and then use the rotating crown to control the zoom in and out of the framing screen.
The IoT Control Center and Audio Control Center mentioned in the product promotion are not yet supported by Huawei WATCH 3, so the full-scene connected experience of controlling the smart home on the watch side, playing music and video on demand on the watch side, and seamlessly casting to the smart screen as envisioned by Hongmeng Connected will have to wait for a firmware upgrade or the next generation.
In Hongmeng Internet's vision, I'm looking forward to using my watch to remotely control air purifiers, sweeping robots, reading and writing lamps, and air conditioners, so that I don't have to hold my phone at home.
As for the "cooperation with car manufacturers, car manufacturers open access, access to the Hongmeng system, with the watch can also control the car, search for the car, open the door, drive the car inside the air conditioning, check the mileage and fuel," this function is also looking forward to it.
In comparison, Huawei in the sports health ecological aspects, is the domestic each do watch cell phone manufacturers to do the most mature, closest to Apple, Huawei watch in the sports scene experience is still relatively rich.
Here, there are not only 100+ sports modes that Huawei heavily publicized, 6 daily sports intelligent recognition, and rich sports data tracking.
On the downside, the smart recognition function is not as sensitive as the GT 2 Pro, and data such as sleep is displayed too little on the watch side, so you need to rely on Huawei cell phone's Sports & Health App to view it. In addition, the data analysis part, the development of the application is still far from enough, and there is still a long way to go compared with friends.
The new "Fatigue Detection" function is one of the data apps that can determine how long it takes to recover after exercise. And this data is also attached to every exercise.
And something like "Running Coach" provides offline AI running companion function. For example, run-walk training, breathing training, and real-time reminders to keep your heart rate within a certain range are very helpful for first-time runners.
But because the Huawei Watch's speakers are loud by default, this stage-by-stage announcing can often be a bit embarrassing during a run, which for the most part is done without headphones.
This varies from person to person, though - after all, in the domestic environment, cell phone speaker sounds in public ****ing situations are all but commonplace at the moment.
The watch also has a built-in barometer, altimeter, GPS, and more. Where it doesn't quite work is that the GPS often has to wait an unpredictable amount of time before it can pinpoint a location every time you start an outdoor activity.
Let's move on to the indoors.
Huawei early on laid out a whole suite of exercise and wellness courses similar to Apple's Fitness+, with 200 video courses in nine official categories. There are 6 common classes by default, plus support for adding exercise equipment such as jump ropes, treadmills, and exercise bikes, all Huawei Hi-Link eco-products.
When you tap and play yoga, strength training, and other classes on your phone, the watch will synchronize to open the corresponding exercise mode and display real-time exercise data such as pace, heart rate, and calories.
It's not nearly as comprehensive as Keep, and there's not a lot to choose from, but given the multi-screen synergies that Hongmeng Connect enables, and the ability to follow workouts like calorie burn through the watch in real time while watching videos with your eyes up, it's certainly a better overall experience.
Honestly, since using this watch, I'm kinda obsessive-compulsive, hard to keep on the Keep on the yoga practice, transferred to the Hongmeng ecological.
Huawei has been pushing sports and health hard on its smartwatches since 2019, and in fact, these sports and health monitoring features we're seeing on the WATCH 3 today were basically present on the previous GT2 series.
This time around, the WATCH 3 utilizes the latest TruSeen 4.5 optical heart rate sensor, which allows for 24/7 monitoring of heart rate and stress levels, combined with SpO2 monitoring to provide comprehensive monitoring data for both exercise and sleep.
It's also worth noting that the WATCH 3 adds a temperature sensor, which we experienced at the beginning of the year, when its competitors offered incomplete temperature detection, and the WATCH 3's temperature detection, which combines an algorithmic estimation of body temperature based on continuous monitoring and real-time detection of skin temperature, to give you a reference.
At least for now, the WATCH 3 does the best job of detecting body temperature on a watch. While we still rely on thermometers or temperature guns for many scenarios, continuous temperature monitoring on the wrist is valuable for health management, and paves the way for more health management features to be developed.
As for Huawei's advertised blood glucose monitoring and 24/7 heart rate irregularity monitoring, they require additional device and app support and are not intended for diagnostic or medical use, something that the ECG version of the Huawei WATCH GT 2 Pro does relatively well.
After wearing the Huawei phone and Huawei Watch together for a while, I still have a lot to learn.
For example, I've found that they're helping me get into the habit of using the watch to keep track of some information, and they're also helping me get into the habit of keeping an eye on my heart rate, exercise goal attainment, calorie burn, and sleep, among other health conditions. Especially with Huawei Sports Health's range of programs, there's also the incentive to exercise more. Overall, having this watch is very helpful for healthy living.
I'm not simply introducing you to the features of the product, but I'd rather share a long-held realization that smartwatches are changing our lives.
Written by: Chen Yi Zero / Shenzhen Bay
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