Huawei timely arrival as tech giants vie for smartwatch crown

THE latest in consumer electronics was on show in Barcelona this week as Huawei, HTC and Samsung grabbed the headlines.

Two models show the new Huawei's 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

THE latest in consumer electronics was on show at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week as Huawei, HTC and Samsung grabbed the headlines.

The Huawei Watch is a smartwatch cum heart monitor that can create activity records for walking, running and cycling. It includes a traditional crown, as well as a choice of more than 40 customisable watch faces.

The watch will be available by mid year; Huawei and others like Samsung have pipped Apple in the smartwatch stakes.

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

HTC’s latest premium smartphone will boast of new cameras, great audio and a menu that arranges app icons based on their usage, and seeks to enhance people’s ability to take “selfies” in the dark.

The Taiwanese company announced the One M9 at a keynote event held ahead of the event.

The One M9 is HTC’s most powerful flagship device to date with a Snapdragon 810 8-core CPU. It has 32 gigabytes of storage, and a slot for a microSD card for an additional 128 GB. You might need that extra storage as on our unit, about 14GB was taken up by the operating system and sample media. It has 3GB of RAM.

Like previous flagships, the One M9 has a brushed aluminium seamless unibody. This model has a dual-tone finish.

There are some important changes from previous models. HTC has dropped the lower resolution camera with larger pixels on the back. Instead it offers a high resolution 20 megapixel snapper on the rear.

The larger-pixel concept persists with a front-facing UltraPixel TM camera. HTC says the camera captures 300 per cent more light than its predecessor, and offers much better image definition in difficult lighting conditions. HTC says its research shows a lot of selfies are taken at night. The camera is designed for this situation. The camera also shoots 4K video.

The new phone features HTC’s latest Android adaptation, Sense 7, which displays the most used apps automatically on the home screen. HTC’s Blinkfeed, a news feed that displays on the home screen, is back and HTC says you can fine- tune it to show news feeds more akin to your tastes. Blinkfeed can be turned off if you don’t want it.

HTC has resisted the move by some competitors to adopt a qHD or 2K display, instead it sticks with 1080p high-definition display, which means better battery life. The phone has a 2840 milliampere hour fixed battery.

Sense 7 also offers new editing features. You can add graphical shapes to shots and can create a shot using two layers of images. A new One Gallery acts as an aggregator of photos saved on the phone, on social media and stored with various cloud services.

HTC’s BoomSound is one of the features most promoted with this phone. Like its predecessors, the One M9 has dual front-facing speakers, and now simulates 5.1 channel Dolby cinema-style surround sound.

Accessories include an updated version of the HTC Dot View case, which displays the time and other lock screen information through a lattice of dots on the front cover.

The phone will be available ­globally in dual-tone silver and rose gold, single-tone gunmetal grey, single-tone gold and dual-tone gold and pink from mid-March. HTC has not released Australian pricing but says it will be about the price of the M8 which started at $899. It will be released with the new Android 5.0 Lollipop operating system next month.

HTC’s larger rival Samsung unveiled a glass and metal Galaxy S6 Edge smartphone, a change from the signature plastic body for its highly successful Galaxy range.

The 6th generation Galaxy smartphone looks like Apple’s iPhone 6, and is no longer waterproof or dust resistant. The battery is fixed and there’s no microSD card slot. Samsung says its 20 per cent faster and 25 per cent more ­efficient than Galaxy S4. Pricing has yet to be revealed but the S6 goes on sale next month.

Chris Griffith travelled to Barcelona for Mobile World Congress as a guest of HTC.