The Huawei Watch was shown off at Mobile World Congress back in March, but the wait for it to actually go on sale has been a long and frustrating one. Thankfully, Huawei now seems ready to launch its newest wearable out into the world, with US pre-orders opening today and shipments beginning on September 17th. The stainless steel and black models are available now, with the rose gold options following "later this year" according to Huawei.
Pre-orders mean pricing details too, and the latest smartwatch to join an increasingly crowded field costs from US$349 to $799 (depending on your choice of casing and strap). That's expensive compared with other Android Wear watches, but competitively priced against the Apple Watch.
International pricing has yet to be announced, but the US figures translate to roughly £230-521 or AUS$495-1,135.
The Huawei Watch is going to be running the very latest version of Android Wear and has been named by Google as one of the first smart timepieces on the platform to support iOS. We liked the look of the device earlier this year – its fully round screen doesn't suffer from the flat tire problem that the Moto 360 does – but we'll have to wait to do a full review before we can give our official verdict.
The device offers a sapphire-covered 1.4-in screen running at a resolution of 400 x 400 pixels (which equates to a very respectable 286 pixels-per-inch). It also comes with a heart rate monitor as well as the usual Android Wear goodies. The side button is placed at the 2:00 position, unlike other devices such as the LG Watch Urbane.
As for availability in the rest of the world beyond the United States, Huawei says the watch is now "available worldwide" – everywhere from New Zealand to Costa Rica – but we don't have details on price or retail partners. For now it seems, U.S. customers are the only ones able to put their cash down.
Source: Huawei
