The original Huawei watch GT stood out largely, thanks to the impressive design and a long-lasting battery and now the brand is back with the Huawei Watch GT 2, a wearable that's excellent and impressive too.

It is - as you'd hope - also advancement in a number of ways. Huawei is making a competitive push into the smartwatch market in Qatar and it’s evident from the Huawei Watch GT 2 that it's has put lots of thought into the second generation. Having said that, the main focus has been more on refinement than delivering a completely overhauled experience.

What it delivers

Design: The Huawei Watch GT2 has a standardized design that goes well with most outfits. It has a circular case with a slightly elevated touchscreen on top and a heart-rate sensor at the bottom. Covering, the case is a metallic frame made of stainless steel, which looks trendy and modern. The frame around the screen is minimal and imprinted with numerical, representing time in the 24-hour format. On the right side of the frame there are twin multipurpose buttons; the top one for the general menu and the bottom one (customizable) for the workout menu.

Display: The Huawei Watch GT2 design is featured by a bold-looking 1.39-inch OLED touchscreen of a 454 x 454 resolution. The screen supports sliding gestures; swipe-down for quick settings, swipe-up for notifications, and swipe-horizontally (left and right) to access music player and information related to heart rate, stress, weather, steps count, etc. The screen is bright, graphic and has excellent sunlight legibility. It supports several watch faces, most with dark backgrounds that look fascinating on an OLED screen. The watch also supports custom watch faces, allowing you to turn any picture from your phone into a watch face background.

Health and fitness: The Huawei Watch GT2 is loaded with several health and fitness features, including the uncommon stress and air pressure monitors. To start with health-related features, the smartwatch has a multipurpose heart rate sensor, which accurately registers heart rhythms during active and resting hours. Similarly, with this sensor, the watch also monitors stress levels. It supports auto stress level monitoring and has a dedicated breathing exercise built in to assist in bringing down the stress level. The heart-rate sensor also doubles up as a sleep monitor to register sleep quality.

As for fitness features, the watch supports several activities, including running programs, outdoor run, indoor run, outdoor and indoor walk, outdoor cycle, indoor cycle, pool swim, open water, climb, hike, trail run, triathlon, elliptical and rower. There is also the option to choose ‘other’ for workouts that are not part of listed fitness training. For outdoor activities, the watch supports GPS and GLONASS. These satellite positioning systems allow the watch to instantly fix the location and accurately record data.

Battery: Complementing the smartwatch’s fascinating display and useful health and fitness features are the Huawei Watch GT 2’s on-battery time. Depending on the usage of smartwatch, you get at least eight days of on-battery time on a single charge.

Storage: The Huawei Watch GT 2 has 4 GB of shared internal storage. Of that only 2.2GB is accessible for storing data — audio files, additional watch faces, etc.

Huawei Health app: The Huawei Watch GT 2 in Qatar is heavily reliant on the company’s Health app (Android and iOS). Unfortunately, the app is neither intuitive nor agile. It seems to be designed primarily to present the health- and fitness-related stats. Therefore, there is nothing more you can expect from it. It lacks a built-in store for watch faces and apps. That said, the watch does not support any third-party apps and watch faces and makes do with the limited set of apps and watch faces that come pre-installed.

Operating system: The Huawei Watch GT 2 in Qatar has an elegant performance, thanks to Huawei’s lightweight operating system. However, the proprietary operating system lacks basic features. For examples, quick replies are missing; audio controls for music files playing on the phone show up only when the Huawei Health app is active in the phone’s background; raise the wrist feature shows the watch’s home screen every time, and the watch gives preference to its speaker and microphone for calls even when the phone is connected with wireless earphones.

Connectivity: In connectivity options, the Huawei Watch GT 2 offers Bluetooth 5.1 also built-in GPS (along with Glonass and Galileo for more accurate, faster and precise positioning).

Hardware and software:

• Out of 4GB of storage only 2.2GB is usable
• Lite OS doesn't support third-party apps
• Includes GPS but no NFC

The Watch GT 2 is powered by Huawei’s home-grown Kirin A1 chipset, which incorporates intelligent power-saving technology. It has 2GB of RAM and 4GB of storage, out of which 2.2GB is usable space - enough to carry around 500 songs.

There’s no NFC support though, so you can’t make payments using the watch. There’s also no Wi-Fi or LTE here, so you’ll need to always keep the watch paired together with your phone to stay things up so far.

Specifications 

Weight:- 41g (without strap)

Case:- 46mm (Metal + Plastic)

Display:- 1.39-inch AMOLED

Connectivity:-  Bluetooth - BT5.1

Sensors:- Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Geomagnetic, Optical heart rate, Ambient light, Air pressure, Capacitive

Charging port:- Magnetic charging thimble

Water-resistance:- 5ATM

Verdict

The Huawei Watch GT 2 seems more of a well-equipped fitness band than a full-fledged smartwatch. It's impressive with its premium design, on-battery time, accurate health and fitness tracking, and elegant performance. Because of its restricted companion app (Huawei Health) for smartphones and a limited app ecosystem leave you asking for more. Huawei Watch GT 2 price in Qatar is starting from 699 QAR. The price of this product varies based on its different models.

Pros

• Great battery life
• Attractive design
• Excellent fitness tracking

Cons

• No third-party apps
• No NFC support
• Can't customize it much