Wearables were big at CES, and the trend is continuing here at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. While Samsung is dominating headlines with the launch of three new Galaxy Gear devices, Huawei debuted its own smartwatch solution in Barcelona this week.
We stopped by the Huawei booth at MWC to check out the TalkBand B1, which is a smartwatch with a removable earpiece for accepting calls. Perfect if you can't get behind the idea of talking into your wrist like a spy.
Specswise, you're looking at a 1.4-inch OLED display, NFC, and a 90 mAh battery (six days on a two hour charge via USB). Rather refreshing is that this isn't Huawei-only in terms of what you can pair it with. The TalkBand B1 supports Android 2.3 and up as well as iOS 5 and up.
The watch itself can tell time (of course) with the tap of a button on the side, as well as count your steps, track distance and calories burned, and monitor your sleep patterns.
It's a unique idea that allows people to carry a Bluetooth headset and a smartwatch at once. Unfortunately, there are some trade offs that come with that convenience. The band that the earpiece/watch face sits in is rubber and a bit on the thick side. The buttons were hard to press as a result, and in places the band didn't fit quite as snugly, which made the buttons a bit harder to press. We're not sure if this is a result of so many people popping it in and out of its band in such a short space of time, or if Huawei has made the bands a little on the loose side to make the earpiece easier to remove.
The TalkBand B1 will arrive in China next month and Japan, Russia, Western Europe and the Middle East in Q2. Huawei says we can expect a €99 price tag when it hits Europe.
Check out all our Mobile World Congress 2014 coverage here!
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