NEW YORK: Chinese phone maker Huawei has announced that its Android Wear smartwatch is now available in the UK with prices starting at £289.
The Huawei Watch is available to buy now from Selfridges, Google Play and Huawei’s own vMail shop. Prices start at £289 for the cheapest, leather-strap model, rising to £599 for the most expensive version.
Huawei is saying that the smartwatch is now available in the UK, but it’s currently showing as for pre-order on its website.
Huawei unveiled its first Android Wear smartwatch, which looks to be the Apple Watch of the Android Wear market with a high-end design and sapphire glass display, at this year’s Mobile World Congress.
On the specs front, the Huawei Watch has a 1.4in 400×400 AMOLED screen, which Huawei claims makes it one of the most vibrant on the market, and comes with a sapphire glass coating making the watch scratch-proof and resistant to water.
This display sits inside a ‘cold-forged’ stainless steel body, which Huawei claims makes the device 40 percent tougher than rival smartwatches. Much like the Apple Watch, this metal-clad bezel features an “ergonomically-placed” crown, which will take wearers back to the homescreen when pressed.
Clearly taking a dig at its “bulky” rivals, Huawei said that the iOS-compatible smartwatch is designed with different wrist shapes in mind, adding that there will be over 40 custom straps available.
There’s also a Qualcomm processor, 512MB of RAM, 4GB of storage and Bluetooth 4.1 connectivity.
It remains to be seen whether Huawei will have as much of as an impact on the Android smartwatch market as it has had on smartphone sales. Analyst firm Kantar Worldpanel ComTech revealed this week that Huawei overtook HTC, Motorola and Sony to become the second-biggest Android smartphone maker in Europe in the past quarter.
