HUAWEI Watch 2 Pro launched in China, comes with eSIM and Android Wear 2.0

Along with the official launch in China of the new Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro, HUAWEI announced a new HUAWEI Watch 2 Pro. The announcement comes as a surprise, as we didn’t get any hint about it during the international Mate 10 launch event held in Munich last week.

Its design is very similar to the HUAWEI Watch 2 Classic, albeit with two key differences: the new smartwatch has support for eSIM and boasts a Chinese version of Android Wear 2.0, stripped down of all Google services.

The new eSIM slot supports 4G/3G/2G connections. Bluetooth and WiFi connectivity are present as well, together with NFC, necessary for contactless payments. The HUAWEI Watch 2 Pro comes with support for HUAWEI Pay, Alipay and Wechat Pay.

The full specification sheet is not available yet, but we can speculate that its hardware won’t be too far distant from its sibling, the HUAWEI Watch 2 Classic. We’re talking about a Snapdragon 2100 processor, 768 MB of RAM, 4GB of internal storage and a 1.2” AMOLED display with 390 x 390 pixels resolution. The smartwatch should boast a IP68 rating as well.

HUAWEI Watch 2 Pro is targeted specifically at mainland China, which is the reason it runs a special version of Android Wear 2.0, sans the Google services. The voice assistant is different, and there are various services included, provided by Baidu, a company that is often called “the Chinese Google”.

Huawei’s latest smartwatch is available for purchase on JD.com for approximately $390, in line with other premium smartwatch models. You won’t have much use for it unless you live in China, and even then, giving up Google Assistant and services might be a risky choice.

HUAWEI offered no information on the eventual availability of the HUAWEI Watch 2 Pro outside of China.