On Oct. 21, Huawei announced a collection of new products to be released in Europe. Highlights included three smartwatches, some PC peripherals, and the Nova 9 smartphone. But not all of these products will reach Canadian shores. Here’s what Canadian consumers can expect in the near future from the company.
The Huawei Watch GT 3 will be the first product to arrive in Canada with HarmonyOS. It’s slated for release this holiday season. Coming in models with 42mm and 46mm watch faces, the two watches feature a 1.32-inch AMOLED display and a 1.46-inch, AMOLED display respectively. Both watches are 5ATM-rated water resistance, meaning they should survive a dive of 50m.
The watches run on an Arm-based processor and come with 4GB of storage and 32MB of memory. They also feature a SpO2 oxygen saturation sensor to monitor blood oxygen levels in addition to a heart rate sensor, air pressure sensor, and temperature sensor to track a multitude of activities, including sleep.
The sensing points on the rear of the watches have been increased from four to eight to increase measurement accuracy. By arranging them in a circular pattern instead of a cross, the sensing point will better fit the wrist bone.
The most impressive part is their battery life. the Watch GT 3 46mm comes with a 455Mah battery and the 42mm has a 292mAh battery. That doesn’t seem like a lot, but Huawei says that the 46mm lasts two weeks on a single charge and it’s 7 days between charges for the 42mm model.
Neither watch uses an eSIM, but users can still make calls via a Bluetooth connection with an Android or iOS device. And of course, they come with a plethora of swappable straps.
In addition to the Huawei Watch GT 3s, Huawei will also be bringing Its premium Watch 3 Pro, launched in June in the U.K, to the Canadian market.
On the peripherals side, Huawei is launching the Mateview and Mateview GT PCÂ monitors for content creators and gamers, as well as the FreeBuds Lipstick earphones.
Unfortunately, smartphones are still off the table for Canada, at least for now. That includes the Nova 9 announced on Oct. 21.
With that said, a spokesperson said Huawei isn’t ruling out the possibility of reentering the Canadian smartphone market down the road. One hopeful glimmer came from the tech publication Techradar, which reported that the P50 series smartphones will launch in other markets in 2022. Unfortunately, “other markets” don’t include Canada; a Huawei spokesperson confirmed with IT World Canada that the phone will not arrive on Canadian shores.
Instead, Canadians will get a variety of PC peripherals. Along with the new smartwatches, Huawei has launched a range of peripherals in Canada including a gaming mouse and PC monitors. While they’re targeting a very saturated market, Huawei said that expanding its portfolio makes sense for people who are already familiar with Huawei.
