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Huawei Watch 3 Hands-on

Written By Louie Diangson
Published • July 19th, 2021
Hands-onWearables
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Smartwatches play an important role nowadays as people tend to become more concerned about their health. We depend on it to provide us with accurate health data and help us achieve health goals. Aside from that, we also want it to pack features that turn it into an extension of our phones. Huawei makes good smartwatches, and the Huawei Watch 3 is their latest. Read our thoughts about it below.

The Huawei Watch 3 comes in multiple models. The Classic Edition has a stainless steel case and brown leather strap, Elite Edition with stainless steel case and stainless steel strap, and the Active Edition with black stainless steel case and fluoroelastomer strap. What we have is the latter and currently the only available model in the Philippines now.

The Watch 3 looks sleeker than the GT 2 Pro. Huawei said that the case is made of stainless steel and ceramic. It also has 5 ATM water resistance so that you can take it for a swim. It’s 46mm in size and 12.15 mm thick. At 63 g (strap included), it has the heft of your typical large, pricey watch.

It’s got a 1.43-inch AMOLED screen with 466 x 466 resolution or 326ppi, which is great for a smartwatch. Screen quality is great even outdoors and has an AOD feature. In addition, it supports full-screen touch, including swiping, tapping, and pressing, and holding.

The crown got a redesign and now has a lined texture, similar to the Apple Watch, instead of the pointy ones on the GT 2 Pro. In addition, it’s fully rotatable and can be pressed to confirm your selection on the interface. Huawei also included another button that works as a shortcut key to your most frequently used Watch 3 feature.

Flip it on its back, and you will see the sensors and some holes for the speaker and the microphones. The speaker quality is loud enough to get audio notifications. The Watch 3 has acceleration, gyro, geomagnetic, optical heart rate, ambient light, barometric pressure, and temperature sensor. The latter is a new one and is in response to the current demand for monitoring temps.

The strap, on the other hand, feels nice and smooth to the touch. It’s made of fluoroelastomer, which is a fluorocarbon-based synthetic rubber and has wide chemical resistance. Meaning it can withstand sweat, soap, oils, heat and doesn’t deform easily. Simply put, it’s tough. Apple even uses this for its sports band. In addition, it’s easily removable and replaceable.

Setup requires the Huawei Health app, which is available for Android and iOS, and a Huawei account. Although note that the functionality of the app is limited on iOS. All you need to do is open the app, tap on devices, and add device. If you’re using a Huawei phone, it will automatically detect the Watch 3 for pairing. All you need to do is follow the screen prompts. For other devices, you will start by scanning the QR code displayed by the Watch 3.

The Huawei Watch 3 is equipped with a dual-chipset architecture, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, and runs on HarmonyOS. Click the crown, and the Watch 3 will display a grid of circular icons. Scroll the crown, and it will zoom in or out of that grid. Alternatively, you can pinch to zoom in or out.

The grid is easy and fun to navigate as you can go through the apps in all directions, not just vertical or horizontal. Gestures are supported as well. You can swipe from left to right to return to the previous screen, swipe from right to left to show apps, swipe down to reveal shortcuts, swipe up for notifications, and press the crown twice to view recent tasks.

The Huawei Watch 3 comes with heart rate monitoring, sleep monitoring, step counter, SpO2 measurement, skin temperature check, and show you stress levels. It can also show air pressure, elevation, and bearings with the compass.

When it comes to fitness features, it has 100+ workout modes — 19 pro modes for indoor and outdoor sports and 85 custom modes. The running part alone already has 13 courses. The Watch 3 also has automatic exercise detection for the 6 most common types of workouts to see all our health data later on the phone. There’s also fatigue measurement and breathing exercises. What’s missing, though, are the quick-workout animations found on the Huawei Watch Fit, which is weird.

As for apps, the Watch 3 is connected to AppGallery and displays watch-optimized apps. Unfortunately, we don’t see a lot of apps worth trying. There are plenty of watch faces available, though, especially the ones already built-in. Unfortunately, if you’re looking for custom ones, most of them are for purchase, ranging from PHP 19 to PHP 99. And it isn’t easy to find free ones. We hope that Huawei has a separate tab for that.

For connectivity, one of the main features of the Watch 3 is eSIM for mobile calls, LTE data, and Huawei Meetime. However, that depends on your telco if they can provide an eSIM for this device. Other connectivity features include WiFi 2.4GHz, GPS (GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, Beidou), NFC, and Bluetooth 5.2.

When it comes to battery life, Huawei didn’t mention the capacity, but the company said it could last for 3 days with most features enabled with 2 hours of LTE connection daily. It can last for 14 days in ultra-long battery life mode. The smart mode in typical scenarios is 1.5 days when paired with an iPhone. So this still depends on your usage, but in our experience, we’re mostly getting 2-3 days. Charging is done wirelessly, and the Watch 3 has a charging puck included in the package, but it can be charged by other wireless chargers as long as it has at least 10A of output.

The Huawei Watch 3 is priced at PHP 18,999. It’s more expensive than the GT 2 Pro when it launched for PHP 11,999. But if you’re already in the Huawei ecosystem and looking for the best smartwatch available from the company, this is the one to get.