The Huawei watch will be sold in Singapore, that is the latest release I was informed by Huawei Singapore last month. The watch is possibly the best-looking Android wear watch you can buy today, even surpassing the likes of the LG Urbane and Moto 360 2nd Gen. Huawei has invited me to have a try out of their watches, following a rather excited call from their staff on the launch of their much-anticipated Huawei watch in Singapore- A tad late as the Americas already have the watch on sale for the past 2 months. Better late than never nonetheless.
If you want to have a go at trying out the watch, do check out their flagship store at Plaza Singapura level 3. The watches are not ready for sale yet, but in the likes of Apple store style exclusivity, there are sample watches in store for try outs and fitting where you can pre-order your watch configuration of choice.
The Huawei watch will come in 3 main flavors, you essentially get the same watch unit with the gorgeous 1.4-inch, 400 x 400 full circle screen (286ppi) and compatible with iOS 8.2 or Android 4.3. It is differentiated in an array of body colours and interchangeable watch bands.
Retail prices are in Singapore dollars.
- Silver face in leather strap- $549 (There is a rose gold in brown strap variant too)
- Silver face stainless steel link strap- $649 (Fine bracelet links and traditional chunky links)
- Black in black leather strap- $649
- Black in black stainless steel link strap- $749
- Rose gold body and leather strap- $899
- Rose gold body and metal gold-link strap- $999
You do pay a premium for the watches and it comes in a pretty box as well which seems to hold it’s age with time. Huawei is marketing the watch as a premium product, contrary to their array of low-priced/affordable phones synonymous to the Chinese OEM. Only the Rose gold option is unique in terms of it’s body and strap colour combination. The first two variants are just mix-and-match variants of the same silver or matte black body paired with permutations of different watch straps material and colour.
Since the watch straps can be easily detached and attached by simply unlatching a spring-loaded clasp on each band, with the exception of the gold variant, it might actually be more sensible and cheaper to down-spec your order by grabbing the base watch model (and colour) of your choice under $500 and upgrade your watch straps to the metallic ones at about $40 SGD a pop by getting these third-party straps off Ebay, saving you at least $100 SGD on average. There are also more leather strap options on Ebay too, such as this light brown or white leather straps too.
While the watch is perfect in almost every aspect, a main problem I found about the watch was it’s proprietary charger- It did not charge on half the time I snap the watch on the demo magnetic base charger, you will have to wiggle the watch a few times to get the 4 pins contacts on the charger to line up with that on the watch where you will get a Lightning symbol on the watch screen to show that it is actually charging. This is unlike the Samsung Gear S2 and the Moto 360 with the “pop and forget” wireless charger. For a watch at this similar price point to the competition, it will be good if Huawei actually ultilised a wireless charger. The charging problem is more real than I thought to be, but not a deal breaker. Charging the in-built and unreplaceable 300mah battery to full takes about 1 full hour tops on a 1 amp USB charger.
No word from Huawei Singapore whether the watches will get the extended 2 year warranty as opposed to the standard 1 year warranty at this point of time, as warranty is largely region-specific. The Android wearable market is a highly competitive and fast-paced one, and with the new LG Urbane 2 LTE being a more feature packed phone-watch and utilizing new Android wear calling features, time is definitely not on Huawei Singapore side when the watch finally gets released here on our shores sometime before Christmas.
