Huawei beats Apple to launch Watch in Barcelona

HUAWEI’S stylish smart watch is getting plenty of attention at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Huawei's Consumer Business Group Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Richard Yu presents his company's new device "Huawei Watch" during a press conference in Barcelona on March 1, 2015 the eve of the 2015 Mobile World Congress opening. Phone makers will seek to seduce new buyers with even smarter Internet-connected watches and other wireless gadgets as they wrestle for dominance at the world's biggest mobile fair starting tomorrow. AFP PHOTO / JOSEP LAGO

COMPETITION ahead of the Apple Watch has intensified with Huawei releasing a stylish round-faced smart watch that’s getting plenty of attention at the Mobile World Congress.

At a packed media event in Barcelona, Huawei said it had “dared to dream” since entering the consumer electronic market. “We are a company of dreamers . of young energetic people who keep trying until our vision is real,” said Huawei’s global brand director Any Lou.

Richard Yu, head of Huawei consumer business group. introduced the products.

Huawei’s Watch is cast in the vein of LG’s successful circular G Watch R, which was released last year. The Huawei Watch includes a traditional crown, as well as a choice of more than 40 customisable watch faces.

The display on the Huawei Watch is sapphire glass; Huawei said it was the first sapphire crystal watch using Google’s Android Wear operating system. The watch has a 1.4-inch AMOLED 400x400 pixel display with 286 pixels per inch resolution, and a 10,000:1 contrast ratio.

The diameter of the watch is 42mm and there’s a range of interchangeable leather and metal straps for it. Huawei says it has made sure that people with smaller wrists find the watch comfortable.

Like other Android Wear watches, the Huawei Watch displays call notifications and users can answer calls on the watch. It has a 6-axis motion sensor, a barometer sensor, and measures steps, calories, and hours of sleep including deep sleep.

The Watch can create single activity records for walking, running and cycling, and has a heart rate monitor. It connects to Huawei’s health platform and to other well-known fitness systems such as Google Fit and Jawbone.

The key will be battery life and price. Huawei is yet to reveal pricing. The Watch will be available by mid year.

The Chinese manufacturer also announced the Talkband B2, a fitness band and Bluetooth headset that can store and play music.

The Talkband B2 has a 0.73-inch plastic AMOLED touch screen, an anti-allergy strap and is 20 per cent thinner than its predecessor, Talkband B1.

It has a “self learning” motion sensor that observes how its wearer moves.

There’s a high quality speaker for listening to calls. Calls can be routed to the headset or a speaker and a smartphone pager can help a user locate their phone. Battery life is 5 days.

The B2 fitness band is selling in Europe from €169 to €199 and will be available in Australia by the end of April. The headset is compatible with Apple’s iOS8 operating system.

The remaining device, Talkband N1, is a Bluetooth headset with high-resolution speakers. It has 4GB of storage and can be used as a stand-alone music player.

The Talkband N1 checks steps, calories burned and provides voice notifications of activity performance. The unit weighs less than 18 grams.

Chris Griffith travelled to Barcelona courtesy of HTC.