Smartwatches

Huawei Watch vs. Moto 360

Huawei Watch vs. Moto 360
Gizmag compares the features and specs of the Android Wear-running Huawei Watch (left) and Moto 360
Gizmag compares the features and specs of the Android Wear-running Huawei Watch (left) and Moto 360
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Default band options
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Default band options
Battery
2/22
Battery
Build (main body)
3/22
Build (main body)
Physical buttons
4/22
Physical buttons
Color options
5/22
Color options
Processor
6/22
Processor
Dimensions
7/22
Dimensions
Display (resolution)
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Display (resolution)
Display (size)
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Display (size)
Display (type)
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Display (type)
Heart rate sensor
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Heart rate sensor
Gizmag compares the features and specs of the Android Wear-running Huawei Watch (left) and Moto 360
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Gizmag compares the features and specs of the Android Wear-running Huawei Watch (left) and Moto 360
Starting price
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Starting price
RAM
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RAM
Release
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Release
Sapphire-covered display
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Sapphire-covered display
Software
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Software
Storage
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Storage
Swappable bands
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Swappable bands
Water resistance
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Water resistance
Weight
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Weight
Wireless charging
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Wireless charging
View gallery - 22 images

Huawei is jumping into smartwatches in a big way, with the beautiful, Android Wear-running Huawei Watch. Let's compare its features and specs to those of the Moto 360.

Update 9/15: We've run an updated version of this comparison, comparing the Huawei Watch's final specs to those of the 2nd-gen Moto 360.

Software

Software
Software

Both watches run Android Wear and, since Google doesn't let OEMs customize the wearable OS, their software is going to be almost identical. The only exceptions are add-on apps, like Motorola's always-on heart tracking app.

Size (main body)

Dimensions
Dimensions

The Moto 360 is about 10 percent taller and wider than the Huawei Watch. The Moto does leave a pretty wide impression on the wrist, so that smaller profile may not be such a terrible thing.

Neither watch is particularly thin, with the Huawei Watch only measuring about 2 percent thinner than the (somewhat beefy) Moto 360.

Weight

Weight
Weight

No weight measurements for the Huawei Watch just yet.

Build (main body)

Build (main body)
Build (main body)

Both watches have stainless steel bodies, and draw design inspiration from standard timekeeping watches.

Default band options

Default band options
Default band options

You can buy the Moto 360 with either a leather or steel band, and it looks like Huawei will be offering the same options.

Swappable band

Swappable bands
Swappable bands

You can swap both watches' bands for a standard one of your choice. For the Moto 360, that's a 22 mm band, and one of Huawei's promotional videos shows a brief mention of either 18 mm or 21 mm bands. We'll update when we confirm its compatibility.

Colors

Color options
Color options

Motorola and Huawei are offering their own versions of black, silver and gold color options.

Physical buttons

Physical buttons
Physical buttons

Each watch has one (faux winder) button, at the 3 o'clock position for the Moto 360, and at the 2 o'clock point for the Huawei Watch.

Display (size)

Display (size)
Display (size)

It's tough to get an exact area for the Moto 360's not quite fully round screen (due to that cut-off point at the bottom), but our estimates have the Huawei Watch's screen giving you around 83 percent as much real estate.

Display (resolution)

Display (resolution)
Display (resolution)

The Huawei Watch gives you a 40 percent sharper screen (based on pixel density).

Display (type)

Display (type)
Display (type)

AMOLED looks like the way to go for smartwatches, as they can more easily run dimmed (nearly black) watch faces all day long, without draining ridiculous amounts of battery. Motorola stuck with an IPS panel for the 360 and – surprise, surprise – it has trouble getting through a day with its ambient (turns on whenever your wrist is within typical viewing angles) screen setting turned on.

Sapphire-covered display

Sapphire-covered display
Sapphire-covered display

Rather than glass, the Huawei Watch's display is hiding underneath a layer of sapphire. The Moto uses a more standard (but still quite strong) Gorilla Glass.

Battery

Battery
Battery

It's too early to say much about the Huawei Watch's battery life, but Moto 360 buyers should be prepared to leave the ambient setting turned off (i.e., black screen when you aren't actively using it) to safely get through one full day.

Wireless charging

Wireless charging
Wireless charging

The Moto's battery does have one bright spot: its wireless charging seems like a perfect fit for a smartwatch. Just rest it on its included charging dock (and watch as it turns into a faux desk clock) to juice up during the night.

The Huawei Watch includes a charging cradle, and it doesn't look like it supports wireless charging.

Water resistance

Water resistance
Water resistance

Huawei hasn't said much about its Watch's water (and dust) resistance, but we'll update when we find out for sure.

Heart rate sensor

Heart rate sensor
Heart rate sensor

Both watches (like most multitouch smartwatches) have heart rate monitors. Motorola's periodically checks your pulse in the background throughout the day and can deliver (optional) daily summaries. We'll have to wait to see if Huawei has anything like that tied to its sensor.

Processor

Processor
Processor

The Huawei Watch uses an industry standard Snapdragon 400 processor, while Motorola (somewhat questionably) offloaded some obsolete Texas Instruments processors in the Moto 360. It's questionable, because that (along with its IPS panel) could be contributing to the Moto's not-so-amazing battery life.

RAM

RAM
RAM

This is another industry standard, as every Android Wear smartwatch so far carries 512 MB of RAM.

Storage

Storage
Storage

Right now storage isn't anything you need to worry about with Android Wear watches, as 4 GB should be more than you'll ever need.

Release

Release
Release

Huawei is being tight-lipped about an exact release date, only saying that the Watch will launch sometime in 2015. The 360 launched last September.

Starting price

Starting price
Starting price

Also no word on Huawei Watch pricing. The Moto 360 with leather band rings up for US$250, while the steel band version (pictured) costs $300. Of course you also have the option of buying the entry-level version and taking it to a jeweler to swap out your own (most likely less than $50) steel band.

Stay tuned for more on the Huawei Watch, and you can read more about Motorola's Wear debut in our Moto 360 review.

View gallery - 22 images
7 comments
7 comments
Daishi
That seems like a lot of processing power and RAM for a watch. Here are the system requirements for Windows 2000 for comparison:
###### 133 MHz or more Pentium microprocessor (or equivalent). Windows 2000 Professional supports up to two processors on a single computer. 64 megabytes (MB) of RAM recommended minimum. 32 MB of RAM is the minimum supported. 4 gigabytes (GB) of RAM is the maximum. A 2 GB hard disk that has 650 MB of free space. #####
So the watch has 16 times the RAM as the minimum required for Windows 2000 and a CPU with 4 cores each running at almost 10x the clock speed.
Is 2015 software really that much more complex than something like windows 2000? I'm not sure exactly what all the extra bits are doing these days.
Maybe its in included libraries but oddly if I try to write something in Java or Python and compare it to something like VB or Delphi back in the day I don't ever say to myself "wow, writing software has come a long way in the last 10+ years"
In many ways you could pick up VB6 or Borland Delphi IDE from scratch and be writing applications in a weekend whereas doing a UI layout with swing or tkinter is a tedious pain in the ass.
Gadgety
Will, nice summary. You listed every relevant dimension, except of course the decisive one not yet available, pricing.
I appreciate that you included the screen size difference, and the thickness/thinness/height dimension. The screen size difference could also have been expressed in how much larger the screen on the Moto360 is to the Huawei: 20.5%.
Provided pricing is close, I imagine the Huawei will be the fiercest competitor to the 360. Incorporating a sapphire glass is a brilliant move. One concern is, will the AMOLED screen run the risk of burn in?
christopher
Reminds me of my first digital watch.
It used red LEDs, and you could not read the time unless you pressed the button, and even then, not in the sun.
In a few years, when everyone's using colour e-ink, these "half day battery life" amusements will be gathering dust in a drawer, and fondly discussed as "remember when your smart-watch didn't even last a day?"
Nairda
Re: Daishi,
Windows 2000 at those specs still lagged. I guess from the point of view of snappiness, ie, from click to action, you would want the whole OS and code libraries to be loaded into ram on bootup like a RAM drive, hence possibly the 512 Mb. The 4Gb is secondary for ram storage and other cache essentials.
As far as the speed of the processor, it may be required to handle the quick transactions, graphics and future proofing as the vendor does not necessarily know what developers will do with it. And this day and age the diff between a 100Mhz and 400 CPU/GPU is probably negligible in teh scheme of things.
Daishi
@Nairda I don't think the difference is very negligible. The 133 MHz intel was on the 0.35 µm (350 nanometer) process and had only about 4 million transistors.
Snapdragon 400 is 1.2GHz, 28 nm, and about 500 million transistors. For comparison the Intel Core 2 from 2006 is about 300 million transistors. There aren't a lot of normalized mobile vs CPU benchmarks but the 400 should be about 5.6 DMIPS/MHz and the Intel is likely somewhere between 1.8 and 2.7 DMIPS/MHz.
So in short the Snapdragon is 10x the clock speed and 2x the instructions per clock over the 133MHz old Intel. I would love to see someone load a hypervisor on something like this and see how many simultaneous VMs of Windows XP they can get running on it at the same time.
Russ Pinney
@christopher Nail on head. Every last one of these 'luxury wearables' will go the way of the Gucci phone. Quietly relegated to the Drawer of Expensive Gadgets that we're embarrassed to own but can't bear to throw out because we paid so much for them.
Michael Visser
You can not use just any 22mm watch strap with the Moto360 as it risks cracking the plastic backing. Only watch straps designed explicitly for the Moto360 will last and even then hope to tell that Motorola/Lenovo service it.