If there’s an early theme at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, it’s wearable technology, with Huawei announcing multiple new wearable devices today.
I rather liked the innovative idea behind the Huawei Talkband B1 when it launched in Australia last year, but the actual execution was ultimately a bit lacking.
Huawei’s gone back to the drawing board with the Talkband B2, it seems, which features a HD touch screen, 6-axis sensor and the same pop-out bluetooth headset as the original B1. It’s expected in Australia by April, with European pricing stated at 199 Euros for the premium leather strap version, and 169 Euro for the simpler TPU strap variant.
Huawei also announced the Talkband N1, a set of behind the head Bluetooth headphones with health and sports tracking facilities. They’re IP54 rated for dust and water ingress, and will go on sale for 119 euros, although it’s not clear if we’ll see those in Australia.
Finally in the wearables space is Huawei’s Smartwatch, simply called… (wait for it)… the Huawei Smartwatch. Huawei themselves appeared to inadvertently leak the physical design of the watch online a little early. It uses a 1.4 inch 400×400 pixel 286ppi AMOLED display, a stainless steel metal body and, just like nearly everyone else’s smartwatch, it’s an Android wear device. No word on Australian availability or pricing just yet, however.
Finally, while it’s not a wearable — unless you’ve got exceptionally large wrists — Huawei also unveiled its latest tablet, the MediaPad X2. It’s a 7 inch, 1200×1920 HD IPS Screen Android tablet with the key selling point being its inbuilt CAT6 LTE connectivity giving it potential download capability of up to 300Mbps. It’s also dual-sim, which is fairly unusual in the tablet space.
Huawei’s MediaPad lines have been a bit hit and miss when it comes to Australian availability, so we’ll have to wait and see if it does in fact reach our shores. 300Mbps down on one of the carrier aggregated networks would be very nice — although the data bill wouldn’t be cheap.
Alex Kidman travelled to Barcelona as a guest of HTC