Tag Archives: android watch

Huawei watch after four months!

After the relative “success” of my YouTube review video “Huawei watch after one week“, I’ve gotten lots of different questions asking about aspects of the watch I didn’t manage to cover. In particular, people were curious if after several months, if my opinions have changed, or if the watch has held up to expectations. I don’t want to publish another video to go over those things, so instead, I felt like writing a blog post.

Gustavo Veron writes:

“[I]t has been 4 months since this video has been published, how is the black watch holding against scratches?”

A great question, especially since the black watch is one of the more expensive variants of the device. I totally understand the concern of wanting the black finish to have some lasting quality to it. I’m pleased to report that it has done just fine. I wear the watch almost daily, and I’m not particularly careful about it either. I’ve brushed up against walls, the gym locker, car keys, etc. and haven’t managed to cause a single scratch on the black metal or the glass face.

One of the next hot topics has been the repeating notification bug. Lots of viewers responded to confirm that they also experience the same problem. Now, it’s not a terminal issue, but it is certainly annoying. Since doing the review video, I’ve upgraded my phone from the HTC One M8 to the Samsung Galaxy S6 and that has seemed to solve my problem. I know that’s not exactly a “solution” for everyone, but I think it’s a fair smoking gun to point at old software as being the issue. The Galaxy S6 has newer versions of all the software involved (Android OS, Android Wear, Play Services, etc.).

An unexpected, and cool outcome, of posting the video is that some users gave me tips that I wasn’t aware of. My favorite came from Djluv5, where he informs me that:

“Don’t need to go to theatre mode… Just double click on the side button and it will turn off the screen.”

I initially misread his comment, thinking he was saying “there was no need for theater mode,” but that wasn’t the case. What he meant was that you can activate theater mode quickly by pressing the side button twice. Very handy, as swiping through the menus on the watch face to enable theater mode is cumbersome, especially because usually by the time you need to activate it, you’re already in a situation where the light coming from the screen is a nuisance.

Viewer Michael Donato writes:

“Hey Alex, I was [wondering] if the smart watch would be suitable for [the] gym?”

Another good question, though I think this will be highly subjective. I personally don’t like having the watch on my wrist when I’m working out at the gym because I don’t find it comfortable in this scenario. The sensor utility is also reduced a bit, as it obviously won’t do much for distance traveled or anything like that. (Heart rate monitoring should still work fine, though.) So between the lack of comfort, and reduced utility of the sensors, I personally choose not to wear it at the gym. But, if you want to, there’s no reason why you couldn’t! The watch is water resistant to IP67 specifications, which means a little sweat won’t hurt it at all, and you could use it to control your music which might be especially useful if you play your music from your phone and keep your phone in a location that isn’t easy to access (e.g. an arm strap, sealed pocket, or in a small bag).

Tester First writes:

“Did you notice any problems with attaching watch to the charger, I’ve heard that sometimes it doesn’t stick well and you have to always check that it’s actually charging.”

Unfortunately, I have to confirm that this is true. The magnetic force that pulls the charging disk and the watch together doesn’t always complete the connection. It’s not too much effort for me to just make sure it’s snapped in correctly before I leave it alone, but it is something worth noting.

Lastly, I also wanted to say how delighted I am by the fact that Huawei included some forward thinking features in the device. With the recent launch of Android Wear 1.4, Google has introduced speaker capabilities directly in wear devices. The software itself wasn’t capable of this in prior versions of Android Wear. Huawei was forwarding thinking enough to know Google was planning to introduce this eventually, and so included a hardware speaker in the watch, even though it would lie dormant until this time. For those early adopters like myself, it’s nice to have even just a little amount of “obsolescence protection,” even if it’s just delaying the inevitable (as is with all technology). For non-owners, it’s nice to know the watch will have all the features of the current generation. It’s not quite out-dated yet! The new Android Wear update also brings some new gesture support, and expanded voice-to-text capabilities. Unfortunately, my watch hasn’t updated yet for some reason, so I need to investigate why this is and try to force it to update to Android Wear 1.4 before I’ll get to try out the new features.

Thanks for reading (and if you watched the video, thanks for watching!). I’m happy to answer any other questions people might have, so feel free to post them here, or on YouTube, and I’ll try to respond. Peace out guys!