gamingtechnews: Huawei-Branded “Smart Watch” Passes Through The FCC

Monday, 1 October 2018

Huawei-Branded “Smart Watch” Passes Through The FCC

In short: A new Huawei-branded smartwatch has now cropped up in an FCC listing that may turn out to be related to the company’s Band 3 fitness family of wearables. As is often the case with information shared via the FCC, there aren’t too many details about the device that can be surmised here. However, the device has been tested for transmitting and receiving data via Bluetooth and can at least act on the receiving end for NFC and GPS. It’s listed as being powered by a respectable 410mAh battery which charges via a dock at 5V/1A, utilizing USB Type-C rather than the usual micro USB. The documentation shows the wearable’s product name as “Smart Watch.”

Background: The likeliness that this could actually be a new smartwatch from Huawei doesn’t really seem plausible at this point, in spite of the name that’s been given to this wearable. That isn’t only because the company has effectively vowed to not produce another Wear OS wearable until the hardware catches up to its ambitions. The model number shown by the FCC documents is very similar to another wearable, the Huawei Band 3 Pro, which recently appeared at the agency’s website. Moreover, the identity of that other device isn’t at all a guess since the images presented with its listing included a clear picture of the box as well – showing it to be the Band 3 Pro.

Simultaneously, differences in the underlying specs of each new piece of hardware are different enough to back up its description as a full-blown smartwatch. For example, the Huawei Band 3 Pro was shown to only have a 100mAh battery and no NFC was there to be seen at all. That doesn’t necessitate that this new device isn’t a fitness watch or band but does seem to be evidence in opposition to that speculation. The company did recently trademark a “Watch X” and it’s not impossible that is the device being referenced here but there aren’t many details on that front either.

Impact: Huawei hasn’t provided any details regarding the Band 3 Pro just yet and there isn’t much else to go on for the time being. The specifications listed at the FCC seem to completely negate the possibility that this would be a new Huawei Band 3 since there’s no reason why the “Pro” version would actually feature any less “premium” hardware. With that said, now that this wearable has passed through the FCC, it shouldn’t take too much longer before it’s made known to the world by the company itself.