Huawei Watch | Hacker News Reader

Huawei Watch

consumer.huawei.com

129 pointsfridek151 comments

Scrolling with the mousewheel is funky in Chrome. Hate when websites hijack the scroll event and misuse it.

I thought they had done a good job with scrolling because I was using the arrow keys, then I tried mousewheeling on a magic mouse and I kept flying to the top/bottom.

only if you are used to scrolling with a keyboard, most people use mouse or trackpad though

scrolling on my trackpad is whacky too. terrible experience. Have to use arrows. worst page i've ever seen

Looks like someone took "mousewheel" a little too literally.

    $(document).bind('mousewheel', function(event, delta) {
        if(delta > 0) {
            upPage();
        } else {
            downPage();
        }
    });

I abandoned the website in less than 20 seconds as I couldn't navigate the page below on Chrome.

Same. Awesome looking watch, but after trying to scroll up and down a few times I was like welp guess I won't be finding out more about this watch! Impossible to find out what's in the middle of the site

Me too. Which is a shame because the watch looks nice (for a smart watch). It seems like something that an adult could intentionally wear in public, unlike many of these gadgets.

While it sucks, why didn't you just try the arrow keys? Works perfectly fine.

Perhaps because there's a dozen ways to scroll a web page and we shouldn't have to try every method until we find one that works?

I'm not defending their decision, it sucks that they did it like this.

But reading the comments, people seem genuinely interested in the product but leave the page because they think it is "impossible" to navigate it? Come on..

How many ways to scroll a webpage are there anyway? Wheel/trackpad, space and key down. Are there more? Even if there is, these are the ones you'll obviously try first.

Page up/down, the scroll bar, click-and-drag to select and scroll are three more off the top of my head.

Also, in the land of UX, your "obviously" is not always everybody else's.

Fair enough, although I'd still imagine the arrow down goes before any of those for most people.

Most programmers, perhaps.

I'd actually pin that on most non-programmers. Arrow down is the most intuitive as far as I've seen. I've never seen anyone not "tech proficient" use anything else anyway.

Same with Firefox and OS X. A tiny move and I am down at the bottom.

Same with Chrome!

This is the first time a product page has made me want to complain on HN about hijacking the scroll event. I just cmd+f'd for "hijack" and knew I'd find other grumblers here.

At the arrows work...

Same on Firefox. Just using arrow keys till fad fades.

PS: Remember how magic* was praised for simplicity of home page? Yeah, we are getting there. I guess.

* http://www.getmagicnow.com

And this picture which is actually on huawei site as the part of the promo (!) illustrates the best why Jony Ive said (1) that "a circle doesn't make any sense" for a smartwatch:

http://consumer.huawei.com/minisite/worldwide/huawei-watch/a...

----

1) http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/23/shape-things-co...

That's the first thing my eyes jumped to, I am a bit surprised that they didn't pick a nicer looking `view`, instead of one with awkwardly truncated text.

Because they didn't bother rethink/adapt the UI (yet).

Still doesn't make much sense. The vast majority of text humans read is displayed on rectangular surfaces.

So? The vast majority of automobiles humans drive are powered by the combustion of gasoline, but that in and of itself doesn't make a plug-in electric car impractical.

I agree that some things need to be reworked in order to better suit a non-square display, but with the exception of the Facebook demonstration, I thought all the other pictured use-cases were rather brilliant and nice-looking.

Majority isn't a good argument you know. Let them explore. Personally too thick and square watches repel me, and I don't intend to read Shakespeare from my wrist either. 2 'full length' rows at the center are probably enough text to read.

Can you not scroll?

Yes, you can scroll.

I think being limited to only square designs is short-sighted. We just don't need a laptop in a small form factor, but a new way of interaction. Hopefully, TTS and ASR with proper dialog management will remove the need to read small messages.

It's designed such that you can quickly decide with a glance "am I interested in this". A wall of text simply wouldn't be appropiate.

If you are interested, after all, you swipe up and can read the text just fine.

You can scroll that card to see the rest of it. I fail to see how this is a problem.

And, in fact, scrolling the card is exactly how it works for a square Android Wear watch too. The only difference is that (with the possible exception of ugly word-wrap cases), the truncation is only vertical, not horizontal as well. Considering how much has to be truncated on a watch screen anyway, I think it is hard to make the argument that the square interface works and the circular one doesn't.

You have to scroll the text up nearly halfway just to see the beginning of the lines. That means most of the space on the screen is wasted because I can't read lines that are not right in the middle of the screen.

The problem lies within the Android Wear UI, not the smartwatch itself. I hope they will "fix" that, now there is another round watch available after the moto360.

Ive also blasted the Moto X for offering so many customization choices and shipped a watch predicated on massive customization.

Let's get one thing straight. Apple lambasts everyone else's designs until they adopt them.

Recall that:

1) Mini-tablets are too small to be usable, you'd have to "file down your fingers to use them"

2) Large screen phones are a) things people don't want and b) don't fit your hand properly. Remember this Thumb commercial? http://9to5mac.com/2014/09/09/the-iphone-5-ad-that-apple-wan...

3) Customization and Widgets in the OS are bad, until iOS 8 gets them

4) Johnny Ive on Moto Maker ("“Their value proposition was, ‘Make it whatever you want. You can choose whatever color you want,'” Jony was quoted as saying in the interview. “I believe that’s abdicating your responsibility as a designer.”") Even BGR noticed this hypocrisy (http://bgr.com/2015/02/19/apple-watch-customization-jony-ive...)

There's many more incidents to this list, but it's typical Apple behavior to pooh-pooh things about competitor products or features right up until the point that they ship them. Then the entire world must pretend that prior to Apple, no one did it, or didn't do it right.

To be fair, basically every major corporation and most people do this. I can think of a half dozen Google examples just from my time there, and more than a few Facebook ones too.

I think what's unusual about Apple here is:

1. How vehement their condemnation is (especially since, in retrospect, they're already busy working on exactly what they're condeming),

2. How quickly and comprehensively they flip the story when their version is ready and

3. How predictable this pattern is for them. Given past experience, I almost expect Apple to be working on actual toaster-fridges in a skunkworks project somewhere (in addition to the metaphorical ones I'm positive they're working on).

What's the alternative, though? They don't want other companies to know what they're working on, so they say "no" to something until they have it ready, and then they say "yes".

There's a difference between saying no ("we think larger buttons on our bigger screen are easier to use" or whatever) and mockery ("you'll need to file down your fingers"). Apple could do one without the other.

I understand why Apple uses mockery (better publicity, more memorable, firing up fans, etc.) but, at a minimum, Apple (and their defenders) should expect well-earned mockery in return, especially given their pattern of flips.

I can't think of any instances of them vehemently condemning anything as a company. Some executive making snarky comments at a press event doesn't count, even if it spawns a gazillion outraged Reddit comments, and even if those snarky comments come from a co-founder of the company who was not known for his tact. In any event, just because an executive makes an abrasive comment about something doesn't mean that the other tens of thousands of people who work for that company shares those views.

Heck, I can't remember the last time they had an ad or even a press release attacking a competitor. I guess the "I'm a Mac" ads were a type of attack ad, but even those were intentionally not mean-spirited, and that was years ago anyway. Their competitors are frequently much more confrontational in their ads.

You seem to be basing your view of them on a particular narrative which relies on assumptions about their motivation and character, i.e. "OK, maybe everybody does that stuff, but they do it for reasons that make them bad people!"

Don't forget "Redmond, Start Your Copiers" hung from banners draped all over WWDC one year. That was pretty juvenile.

Why don't you say it counts?

Ive or Jobs rubbishing other design choices is precisely what we are talking about here.

I remember at the time when Steve Jobs said that no one will want a colour iPod. That was the first time I stopped and thought - really???

Some serious sales technique the way Apple waits to add colors for a product and then makes it seem like a big innovation. I love apple and use their products all the time but never understood the lack of colors initially for a company that is all about thinking different.

Do you think Apple is not capable of making the round watch? It's obvious that they really evaluated the possibilities, saw exactly the effect nicely illustrated on the picture, and decided to sacrifice the "roundness" this time. The same people that insisted on rounded corners at the times when it was costly (1) to make them. A concious decision, not something that competition does better. I fully understand you though if you prefer the round smartwatch.

1) 1981: http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Round_Rects_Are_E...

Of course! All of that is completely correct.

The point is that Apple often attacks other companies who make different trade-off decisions.

Remember how they rubbished the idea of larger phones and said what a terrible idea that was? Turns out that it wasn't a terrible idea - there's a whole set of people it is better for.

Most hours of the day, I wish I hadn't upgraded my iPhone 5S to a 6 -- but I understand the superficial "pull" of the bigger screen is almost impossible to avoid, which is why I still use the 6.

Believe me, there will be a iPhone 7 Mini. The 4 inch size is just too sensible to abandon.

Believe me, there will be a iPhone 7 Mini. The 4 inch size is just too sensible to abandon.

This is precisely the point.

There is such a diverse set of requirements that different outcomes depend on the priority you give to each one.

All too often Apple denies this in the quest for the "one true solution".

Apple has offered their "one true solution" in many sizes before in the past; it's hardly unprecedented.

Apple always has and always will talk down the type of products that it doesn't sell.

Although, I do think they were on to something when they said that large screen phones are too big for your hand.

Ironically I didn't buy an iPhone 6 and moved to my first Android for this reason. It's actually quite difficult now to find a decent spec phone that comfortably fits an average sized hand. Even the 'mini' phones have quite a large footprint. Ended up with a Sony Z3 Compact and I'm pretty happy with it so far (nearly 2 days battery life is awesome).

I similarly ended up with a Sony Z3 Compact. The ultra stamina mode is excellent. It shuts off all extraneous circuitry and you have to reboot to start up again. Meanwhile you're left with a minimalist greyscale screen with essential functions and a estimate of battery left. It's too optimistic I think but it will happily tell you there's ten days charge left on ultra stamina mode if you started with a full battery.

Me three! The camera and flashlight are disappointing (my 3 year old 4S was brighter), but aside from that I really like the Z3C. I'm not exaggerating to say I've gotten 3 days of battery life without touching Stamina Mode or Ultra Stamina Mode.

I've gotten more use out of my compact than my surface pro 2, ffrom day one. I think this little phone is more usable and certainly faster for browsing. ( opera for word wrap rules!) and I simply feel it's faster, renders faster, LTE when I have signal better than consumer FTTC !

Not having wanted a android phone particularly ... a Lumia seemed right for my use and Microsoft centric world... I didn't lose the great maps just downloaded Nokia Here , still have office and one note... And outlook. Oh and I got Opera browser which is for word wrap just indispensable.. All in all a bargain. But I really am almost using this phone for every task but design and code so I've not gotten more than a day and a half yet... Still amazing for it being picked up constantly and running about five apps simultaneously standard .. and I got it on a wicked deal bundling 20GB data so I'm in clover! I feel bad like I'm shilling especially as I forgot my older login here but it's such a neat package all I want is a sweet little repl with loads of libraries and great auto predict to play with this thing...

> Apple lambasts everyone else's designs until they adopt them.

Everyone does this.

It wasn't long ago that Samsung was laughing at Apple for moving the headphone socket to the bottom. Guess where it is on the new S6.

The real question is: does a company adopt a competitor's design because experience in the real world ultimately proved it to be the better design -- or are they adopting it superficially to defensively diminish perceptual marketing differences?

if in fact it is a problem, it is a software problem

I'm going to guess that the last line, the one with the truncated text, says "Youtube, it's awesome" in full. Context is pretty powerful; this doesn't seem like a bad image at all: to me it demonstrates precisely that a circular face isn't a problem.

as a moto 360 owner its hardly a problem. I can tell right away if its something I want to read in a glance, in this context from the picture alone. I'll immediately dismiss it, otherwise I'll scroll up for more information. Even with gmail notifications, this is not a problem.

I think this entire quote by Ive is similar to Jobs argument, that 3.5" is perfect size or 10" tablet is the perfect size.

My thoughts exactly.

Stuff at the bottom is quick, short notifications anyway. Want more details? You'd scroll up anyway.

Works fine for me - in fact, I was pleasantly surprised how well the thing works. I used to think smart watches were a gimmick, now I'm a believer. The 360 rocks.

As an owner of the Samsung Gear Live (square) and Moto 360 (round) second this. The picture posted there is the preview of the actual message and it provides enough context to decide whether you want to swipe it up or not. Whether the message is truncated uniformly at the bottom or at some pieces to the sides doesn't make any difference in practice.

This takes a page from Metro's (now Modern UI) truncating semantics: if it's truncated, it means there is a continuation and you can scroll it.

From the recent New Yorker profile of Jonny Ive:

> The shape of the body, meanwhile, barely changed: a rectangle with rounded corners. “When a huge part of the function is lists”—of names, or appointments—“a circle doesn’t make any sense,” Ive said. Its final form resembles one of Newson’s watches, and the Cartier Santos, from 1904.

I think circular watches, in principle, look a lot nicer (certainly in ads), but that quote was the first thing I thought of when I saw the Facebook screenshot[1]. I think Apple might have this one right.

[1] http://consumer.huawei.com/minisite/worldwide/huawei-watch/a...

Edit: Ah, didn't see acqq just said this exact thing. "You can scroll" isn't a solution to this though. There's a big difference between being able to read a message from a glance at a wrist to having to physically interact with the device. The more interaction you need, the less benefit you have with the watch over just taking your phone out.

Android Wear is specifically designed to avoid this problem. You get a series of glance-able cards that you can swipe through for more information or actions. In maybe one or two places (the Settings app) do you actually get a list view, and they are all one-line entries that fit easily on a round screen.

Apple's philosophy toward the smartwatch experience is just different. Android Wear is all about contextual notifications and glanceable information. What we've seen of Apple Watch is smartphone apps scaled down. I'm sure it will be very powerful and well-designed, just not my cup of tea.

Still, the actual "usable" area on a circular watch is the square within.

Somehow I can read emails and reply to texts just fine. And people don't ask me about the calculator on my wrist.

Or a circular aperture could naturally be viewed as a "spy hole". Why not use the gyros, the fact that the watch is on a movable limb, and there is typically a single viewer, to fake up a holograpic view, whereby a virtual screen is bigger than the watch and the user sees the whole screen by moving their wrist relative to their eyes.

As jwz has it, 'Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail.' I don't think he meant this as an endorsement.

I don't want to read things on my watch - I want one that I just look at it, and where the circular frame is the basis of the design, so it's either a simple thing within that like a face with a call icon, or some sort of radial display like a clock, or some more abstract interfaces like sections or bubbles. It will take a little time for a new visual grammar to emerge.

I window if the pixels are square or hexagonal; probably the former, but the emergence of the latter seems only a matter of time.

I window if the pixels are square

Leider geil

I think this might be an example of Ive's lack of experience in UX versus industrial design is showing. Not saying he doesn't know UX but it isn't his primary mode of operation. Or they simply didn't have time to do a circular UI.

I'm a big believer that the best smart watches will be round. A circle is more aesthetically pleasing than a rectangle. More importantly it has better ergonomics and you could do things like rotate the watch face according to hand position.

Lots of content looks really well when encapsulated by a circle since it looks more "organic". Photos, faces, maps, time. It's a little bit worse for chunks of text however but most snippets displayed like a SMS should be pretty short.

There's also a huge opportunity to use a rotatable bezel as tactile complement to a touch screen, making zooming, and scrolling easier. Being excellent for things like "dial selectors" and preventing smudges and being all around easier to find, grip and manipulate than the screen or a crown. Having invented the scroll wheel for the iPod for nearly the exact same reasons one would think Apple would be wise to this fact.

So what about the claim that it should be rectangle because "a huge function is lists". I think this simple is lack of imagination on the UX part. You have to think of the main purposes for a watch, as a complement but not replacement for a phone.

I actually don't see many scenarios where you'd want to browse through large lists or wall of texts on your watch. In most cases you want to view small nuggets of information and do some basic manipulation. In many cases I think "scrolling" could be replaced by for instance simply switching the whole circle content and having some indicator in the perimeter.

I suspect however the reason that both Android and Apple is going primary the rectangular route is that it does however require more imagination and radically different UI's than a phone, and time weren't on their side to do that quite yet.

I wouldn't be surprised if most if not all smartwatches in the future are circular

> read a message from a glance at a wrist

Do you expect to read all messages you get from a glance? How about emails? In fact, many messages you get won't be fully visible on the screen at one time - so what's the difference? Crucially - who is to say that text is all that can be conveyed when "glancing" at a watch? These things are not kindles.

I'll tell ya, I've owned both a square and a round Android Wear device. Forgetting the comparison to the Apple Watch, I much prefer the round Moto 360 to the square LG. Aside from the aesthetics - ironically, the circular display seems like it fits more on the screen, not less.

Luckily with Android you've got a choice, and the Android Wear team has built great APIs to handle both screen types.

There's a decent amount of spin behind that statement. For one thing, none of the interfaces Apple have shown us actually have lists.

I wouldn't be surprised if version 2 or 3 of the Apple Watch changes to a round design.

I think circular watches, in principle, look a lot nicer

It's worth mentioning that the roundness of watches came from their history of being miniaturised clocks, which standardised on the analogue dial with rotating hands for its display. Making the watch round to fit its display made sense, and people got used to round watches as being the norm.

Looking at it that way, a round smartwatch seems like an anachronism; there's no reason they have to be made round, and the technology behind them favours making them rectangular. Saying that smartwatches are better round is sort of like saying that LCDs should be made in the same circular or semi-spherical shape that CRTs were.

Telephones have also changed in shape, from the earliest "two sticks" design with separate transmitter/receiver, the symmetrically-shaped handset that remains common for landlines, and the mobile phones that gradually evolved from that shape to the rectangular slabs of smartphones today.

Thus, much like smartphones look nothing like traditional telephones, I don't think it's necessarily true that smartwatches will need to be round.

Physical comfort plays into the round design, and the cycling nature of our time-standards feeds into how we choose to display it.

(my 360 has a 'bezel' which rotates to show daylight and appointments at TDC, for example, and it's not really skeuomprphic or overly fancy)

Huawei is the main Supplier of the GFW of China. The Golden Shield Project (Chinese: 金盾工程; pinyin: jīndùn gōngchéng), colloquially referred to as the Great Firewall of China [1] (Chinese: 防火长城; pinyin: fánghuǒ chángchéng) is a censorship and surveillance project operated by the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) division of the government of China.

Main? I believe that title goes to Cisco. Not sure what it has to do with a smart watch though.

http://blog.thomsonreuters.com/index.php/suit-over-ciscos-ro...

>Not sure what it has to do with a smart watch though.

Having something on your wrist made by a company that has hundred-million dollar deals providing surveillance technology to the largest surveillance state in the world seems as if it would have significant security implications.

Not to mention the ethical implications of supporting them as a customer.

I thought they were replacing their Cisco routers with local equipment as they age out. Cisco is specifically on the nobuy list, I believe.

I think this watch looks much, much better than the Apple Watch (though I think the Apple Watch is a bit garish).

I agree.

I had no interest in the iWatch - but this might be interesting (once the battery life is worked out).

I'm kind of annoyed by Ive's glib dismissal of a circular form factor for watches. There's going to be a whole design language based on circles that make much more sense for watches. For instance, it's pretty easy to imagine a minimalist daily calendar overlay on top of standard hour/minute hands that give you just as much information as the vertical list orientation commonly used in calendar apps. Is it going to be able to show as much information that way? No. Will it still be very useful? Yes.

I think some really cool stuff can be done with a circular display combined with a watchface. What if weather forecast icons were used in place of the hour marks showing you at a glance the type of weather to expect throughout the next 12 hours. There are tons of other things like this which would make for really slick, intuitive and futuristic feeling interfaces. Say you have various appointments throughout the next 12 hours. the edges of the watchface could be color coded to different things on your schedule. touching a section and swiping toward the center of the watch could open up details about that particular item on your itinerary. I've got more ideas too :P

You mean like this?

http://images.apple.com/v/watch/c/overview/images/face_weath...

The watch on the left in the first picture appears to show a heart rate graph labelled with "bmp", which is a file format. The unit of heart rate is beats per minute, or "bpm".

Which raises the question if the functionality that does what's on that picture actually exists. Or maybe they have just the Chinese version at the moment?

Or, more likely, if the picture was designed by a marketing team, rather than the people who built the watch.

When you show something you don't actually have somebody might say you're doing false advertising. Unless you add a disclaimer of sorts.

No, what I mean is that it's most likely the marketing team made a mistake mocking up the image. Not 'the marketing team is inventing features'.

Those disclaimers are all over the videos.

The main criticism of circular smartwatches is that they unnaturally truncate text. The screenshots don't even try to hide this. While I do think circular watches look better, circular smart watches are just silly.

Edit: I mean to say, they look better when off or when displaying a circular watch face. They look silly when displaying text.

Given that it's an intentional, purposeful design element of Android Wear, why in the world would they "hide" it?

Because it looks terrible?

http://i.glui.me/1EetEHO

Why emphasize a major failing of your product?

That doesn't make sense. Huawei clearly believes the circular screen isn't a failing or they would have made a different watch.

You may not like circular smartwatches (I certainly don't), but that just means this watch is not for you. Plenty of people want them (see the pre-release excitement over the Moto 360, for example). This watch is for them.

95% of the time is showing a watch face. You can also pull up the "half-card" notification to read it just fine; the horizontal insets ensure the entire text on the card is readable when the notification is "expanded".

95% of the time is showing a watch face

...and the other 5% of the "time" is showing the hands? :-)

I think the biggest gripe with showing straight lines of text on what is essentially a curved viewport is that mix of curved/straight just doesn't feel quite right. It has the same feeling to me of looking at an old CRT TV with the corners of the image rounded off.

I don't know if displaying the text curved to match the screen would be any better...

> major failing of your product

I don't view truncation as a major product fail. Would you also categorize iOS and/or Android notifications as fails because they truncate the important parts of notifications?

Besides, in the screenshot you linked to -- you can pull the card up a bit to reveal the rest of the text if you're interested.

This is why if I ever decide to go for a smartwatch, I'm getting an Asus ZenWatch.

Go for it. I have the ZenWatch and am very happy with its design.

I don't know. I have been using my Moto 360 since September and the truncated text doesn't bother me.

What's wrong with me? #sarcasm

I'm surprised that anyone (apart from Apple) is bothering to make smart watches.

I stopped wearing a watch years ago, because the extra information I got from looking at my smartphone covered the overhead of pulling it out of my pocket. I've enjoyed not having something strapped to my wrist, so any of these horribly thick smart watches are going to have to provide a compelling benefit to get anywhere near my arm.

Because of size and power issues, you can't actually read or deal with anything but the most trivial issues on a smart watch. So the main value proposition seems to be that they tell you you need to look at your phone, and that's not compelling enough for me.

Apple will get some sales, from those who need their status affirming - just like the people who still wear a Rolex watch. But I'm betting that all the other smart watches disappear fairly soon.

My pick for the next real user interface revolution? Smart hearing aids, using speech as the UI. Inconspicuous, and simple to use - particularly for our affluent ageing population, many of whom need the hearing aid part anyway.

>My pick for the next real user interface revolution? Smart hearing aids, using speech as the UI. Inconspicuous, and simple to use - particularly for our affluent ageing population, many of whom need the hearing aid part anyway.

I like this idea.

The best part? The elderly are already used to spending a few grand on these and the current functionality is limited to amplifying/filtering sound.

I don't think anyone wants to be talking to their device constantly to get anything done. Google glass comes to mind...

Google glass suffered heavily because it having a video camera that people felt invaded their privacy and it had a highly visible form factor.

A solution similar to a hearing implant/headset doesn't have either of these issues.

Hearing aids are already very smart. I got a cochlear implant a year ago, and it's fantastic. I've had moderate to severe hearing loss since birth. I wore hearing aids for the past 25 years with loads of different models, even brands so I know from experience.

I got the Med-El Opus 2 and RONDO as the processor for my implant: http://www.medel.com/rondo/

Hearing aids are again, very smart -- they do things like increasing volume to hear voices (coded to whatever your hearing loss is) when you're somewhere noisy (next to a busy road, a pub and so on). They usually 'communicate' together, changing volume automatically as an example and very rarely need any tinkering: just turn them on to hear.

Hearing aids and Cochlear Implants are some very fascinating tech, and very well made.

OK, you clearly don't go surfing at lunchtime with a meeting afterwards that you don't want to miss. Like I just did. With a watch. And no phone.

That said, a normal watch is fine for me, getting emails while in the water would be a hugely negative feature.

Agree that there are many untapped opportunities in voice UI, not just for elderly but for people doing stuff such as driving, operating tools etc. (Again, not surfing!) After all, in the end video did not kill the radio star.

I'm in the market for a smartwatch like this and I'm seriously considering this one and I can't wait to hear more about it. BUT I have to say something about this video. I'm from Alaska and do lots of backcountry snowboarding so this kind of stuff probably doesn't matter to most people but this video is laughable for a few reasons:

> guy reminiscing about a memorable camping trip with friends yet can't remember how to get there.

> driving a classic mercedes with rear wheel drive on slick snowy roads.

> using ancient snowshoes that should be hung on a wall as a decoration and not actually used while wearing other completely inappropriate clothing.

> cool, your watch let you know it's -12c hopefully your ears won't be frostbitten off by the time you're done wandering around in the backcountry by yourself without a hat. (wouldn't want to mess up that stylish hair do)

> a watch whose battery will only last a couple days is probably not the best thing to depend on for an overnight trip in the backcountry.

> using google now as if he would have cell data coverage in the backcountry.

I know I'm being a bit harsh and I'm probably not the target audience for this video.

But my honest impression based on that ad is that people who use this watch are fashionable city slickers who have no idea what they are doing and use completely impractical even dangerously outdated equipment in order to look fashionable.

What would actually appeal to me?

>Guy hauling ass on his mountain bike/snowboard/skiis.

>He checks his watch to view his heartrate/trail data on an app like http://www.strava.com/ .

>App indicates relevant data like current heart rate, average speed, trail location.

>scene cuts to end of his ride where the app indicates he has just set both a new personal record for that trail and that he is also the new recordholder.

>Guy is back at his car. Watch indicates he has a fancy dinner appointment in one hour.

> Scene cuts to him changed into fancy clothes and putting on his nice blazer/spiffy trenchcoat. His watch indicates that he should leave now in order to get to the appointment on time complete with a map and directions.

>guy is seen at dinner with watch displaying a classy watchface showing off that it is suitable to be worn with formal attire.

ad ends.

I found the video offensive. I wanted to know about the watch. 1 minute in, it was almost entirely just shots of that guy. Fuck that shit. They're trying to get me to think the watch is cool because the guy is cool, rather than sell me on the features. I didn't finish watching. Treat me as a rational consumer or GTFO. And stop wasting my time. My time is valuable to me.

yes. All the videos are cringeworthy with laughably clumsy and fake sounding dialog. They are in dire need of coaching to better appeal to westerners.

I'm really hoping they pull this off. Their hardware is alright, perhaps a bit cheap feeling. But the software, yikes. Huawei understands memory so poorly, that they have a button that appears every time you try to switch app. Said button force kills every app that's running. Then gleefully proclaims that it "freed" up memory. It's beyond idiotic.

It feels like they modified Android purely for the sake of modifying it. Hopefully with the watch they'll be a bit more careful. Huawei's the only major company (?) making large-screen long-life devices. I don't have to charge my Huawei phone (Mate 2) every day. That's a relief, unlike every other major phone. (And, just $300.)

Android Wear is maintained updated by Google on all Android Wear devices - and OEMs can only install apps and watchfaces, they can't mess with the OS like they do on their phones.

Doesn't it bother anyone else that what's on that page (and in the video) doesn't really resemble the real thing[1]? This happened with another company -- I want to say LG -- and their renders were very optimistic views of the real thing, hiding the bezel and depth of the screen as well as falsely depicting how sharp the screen would look.

[1] http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/3/8140837/huawei-watch-design...

Indeed, there's no way the screen is going to look that bright in real life, even IF they put all the battery output behind it.

And that's a big reason why smart watches will never look as good as a real watch - the screen is just a big dumb surface with some vague electronic light. Compare with intricate mechanics, colors and materials of a proper watch.

I'll still switch to a smart watch, once they nail power consumption and features (it needs to substitute a phone, including phone calls), but good looking it ain't.

Wow that thing looks nice. I wonder what MSRP will be.

Wow: sapphire cover! Now there's a differentiator.

Price and battery life, without those two stats it is hard to comment.

Still waiting for a version of smartwatch built for females.

I wondered about that - I have small wrists, and this is a fairly thick watch. I like chronometer-style watches but they always seem too big. I really do like the look of this, so I hope it's a good fit - and if it's not for me, then I hope it is for enough people to drive development of a slimmer version.

400x400 for a circle?

Looks like they're clipping the corners, so not actually 400x400 resolution.

> How can the resolution be 400x400 for a circle?

Not using square pixels. I mean, it would be insane, but...

I'm not sure I understand how it works - are the 40 designs they talk about all 'themes' than can be swapped?

Ie the watch has a digital screen that displays the dial, etc?

Yep. That's how the Moto 360 works, too, fyi.

Thank you

Isn't the dial off-center? http://imgur.com/5nFbP5r

Looks like all the images are just Photoshop mockups so any centreing issues should be taken with a grain of salt.

"Ergonomic button placement": http://imgur.com/Ed57fhj

Makes sense. Since it's just a button, not a dial, the higher placement is more convenient for the index finger.

More convenient for the right index finger.

You'd need the "crown" on the left of the watch body, in that case. Although it would be very nice of Google to add an option to flip the interface for users who want to wear the watch "upside-down".

and the higher placement makes it less convenient for a left thumb.

Good point. I see, by the way, that the parent post was talking about the dial of the watch face, but I mistakenly interpreted that as a reference to the crown/button on the side.

My money's on "sloppy photoshop."

Or maybe they're going for some funky thing where the hands stretch out when they're pointed up and right.

But probably the photoshop.

Remember when cellphones were getting smaller every year, and a smaller phone was a status symbol? And then suddenly touchscreens happened, and now phones are getting bigger and bigger again?

I feel like smartwatches are the result of that "smaller" impulse pushing through the trend.

No mention of battery life in either features or specifications... I guess that most users won't find in any way troublesome that this thing barely runs for a day between charges...

Wondering if the stainless steel case might not affect the Bluetooth radio performance…

Scroll with mousewheel is working fine on Chrome 40 for Windows 8.1

"Full circle design" in contrast to the Moto 360.

With a big bezel and recessed screen, in contrast to the Moto 360.

I'm glad this is going to be a crowded space. With the iPhone Apple easily offered a 10x better product. Seeing the smart watch space I don't see anyone offering anything close to a revolutionary product.

How many times do I have to charge it per day? Hahaha!

Hard to tell, is it a mechanical watch with a digital overlay?

Isn't Huawei the company that the United States barred because they were spying/embedding firmworms/foreign? Of course the gov would know what to look for, but why would I wear a Communist produced watch on my wrist?!

That is correct. This company is notorious and known to put spyware software on it's phones.

Notorious ? Known ? Do you have any references (if possible from other sources than US gov. agencies) to back those words ? Did anyone come forward with some concrete proof/source code? I'm really curious.

http://www.phonearena.com/news/Former-CIA-chief-has-seen-har...

Where do you think most of the technology you use today come from?

I don't think the well-paid engineers and business executives who produce the device are communists, but I think the Chinese government could certainly have an invisible hand in their production just as our government may have a hand in the production of our devices.

That's a pretty inflammatory response. Huawei is banned from bidding on US Government Contracts [1]. As a consumer you can definitely keep that in mind, but that "communist produced" comment is a little bit too much Joseph McCarthy for me.

[1] http://www.bbc.com/news/business-29620442

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy

Take it with a grain of salt, considering the NSA got caught intercepting and physically bugging hardware from various vendors as well...

I don't know about the communist part, but Huawei is known to have links to the Chinese military. Given recent events about Lenovo and Superfish, it probably is wise to reaccess the security/privacy implications here and not just the shape of the watch.

If all your tech might be spying on you, you should pick the one not controlled by someone with legal authority in your local area...

Unless you are working with military technology, or some real 'secret sauce' company confidential tech, you are probably not interesting to PRC but fascinating to the IRS...

I think this is probably why you mentioned IRS:

http://m.cnsnews.com/news/article/irs-buying-spying-equipmen...

But then again, if you don't belong to one of the groups "interesting" enough to the US government, you wouldn't care if your tech is bugged? Privacy should not be a means but an end in itself. If we all "have nothing to hide", then we should all use postcards for our mail.

Techs made by someone with _direct_ ties to the government are more likely to have surveillance capabilities baked in, and tend to be easier for government to access. Especially when that government is well known to engage in espionage by directly sponsoring cyber warfare carried out by military units.

Also, I guess western governments have Huawei bent over even more of a barrel than say google. Huawei devices are used extensively in infrastructure. Most governments (known to include the UK and India) insist on huawei funding government labs to inspect the devices for backdoors. I guess if you already have secret inspection deals with creepy government security types, they might ask you to add a backdoor of their own as part of the certification process.

What electronics can you buy these days that are not "Communist produced"? I'm posting from a "Communist produced" computer and I'd bet you're reading on one.

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