Huawei takes the wraps off new Lite OS smartwatches
Huawei has officially unveiled the Watch GT Active and Watch GT Elegant – two new luxury and sporty options of its LG Watch GT smartwatch.
Announced alongside Huawei’s P30 flagship smartphone at its launch event in Paris, the new Huawei Watch GT Active and Elegant Editions run on the company’s own Lite OS operating system.
Hands on: Huawei Watch GT Active review
In terms of what’s new, the watches are now available in 42mm and 46mm size options, matching what Samsung offers with the Galaxy Watch. Both feature ceramic bezels and a stainless steel casing. Both will also offer QuickFit straps that let you mix up that look further. There’s new colours too with the watches available in dark green, black, orange, black, white and brown.
In the screen department, the smaller Huawei Watch GT features a 1.2-inch, 390 x 290 HD AMOLED display. The Watch GT Active packs a larger 1.39-inch, 454 x 454 AMOLED screen. Huawei’s heart rate sensor is on-board both new versions, as is GPS, GLONASS and GALILEO satellite support for mapping your outdoor activities.
You get the same sports tracking modes as the first Watch GT including real-time coaching with the addition of a new triathlon mode. There’s also fitness tracking features including sleep monitoring while core features like notifications and customising watch faces are of course supported too.
Huawei is bringing big battery life too, with the Active offering 14 days and the smaller Elegant Edition delivering 7 days. Both will work with Android and iOS devices and offer a 5ATM certified water resistance.
With the new Watch GT models that gives us two more running the company’s proprietary Lite OS, as opposed to Google’s Wear OS. Huawei has previously stated it’s not abandoning Google’s operating system, though these models appear to suggest, at least for this generation, it’ll be sticking with its own solution. The company revealed it’s sold 1 million Watch GT smartwatches since it launched five months ago, which suggests the proprietary software isn’t having an impact on its smartwatch sales.
It will cost for Elegant and for Active. Stay tuned for our hands on to see what the new-look watches are made of.
