The Huawei Watch is now shipping to customers willing to pay $350 or more for a smartwatch that runs Android Wear. It’s one of the best-looking Android Wear watches to date, if you’re a fan of classic watch design. And it’s also one of the first Android Wear watches to work with iPhones as well as Android smartphones.

It turns out the Huawei Watch is also a first in another way: it’s the first Android Wear watch to have a speaker.

huawei watch_04

The folks at Android Police opened up the case of their Huawei Watch review unit and found a speaker in the case.

It doesn’t actually do anything yet. Google’s smartwatch operating system doesn’t currently support audio output through a speaker. You can pair Bluetooth headphones with an Android Wear device to listen to music or other audio. But there’s no native support for speakers… which might explain why no other Android Wear watches have them.

huawei watch speaker

So what’s Huawei up to here? Is the company planning to release a special app that enables the future? Does the company suspect (or know) that Google will add support for speakers in the future? Did someone in the factory accidentally drop a smartphone speaker in the case?

Odds are the speaker is a sign of things to come. Google has been known to add new features to existing Android Wear watches through software updates. The platform didn’t support WiFi when the first devices shipped in early 2014. But many early Android Wear devices had the hardware to support WiFi, so when Google release a new version of its smartwatch operating system with support for WiFi, those watches were able to take advantage of it.

The Huawei Watch may be the first Android Wear smartwatch with a speaker… but maybe it won’t be the last.

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10 replies on “Huawei Watch has a speaker (for some reason)”

  1. “…(for some reason)”

    My old Casio digital watch has a piezo transducer. It chirps on the hour and has two user settable audible alarms. A speaker is mandatory for these reasons alone IMO.

  2. Gear 2 Neo has a speaker and you can use it exactly like a bluetooth headset. It just runs Tizen, but the new Samsung Gear S2 has a speaker too in the 3G versions.

  3. One of the most basic functionalities for a digital watch is an alarm. How else would you hear that without a speaker?

  4. A watch looking thingy with an obvious plastic bottom…

    I think I just made up my mind that I will never buy a watch from a phone or computer maker.

    I’ll keep my Citizen Watch that’s waterproof and charges itself from ambient light and has a 6 month power reserve.

    If I EVER felt the need for one more type of electronic dog leash, I’d buy mine from Citizen…

    1. LOL, its technology, you dont buy an Android Wear watch to hand down to your grandchildren, you buy it because what it can do… What my LG URBANE does for me is allow me to raise my wrist and ask any question and get an immediate answer. It allows me to chat with friends on HANGOUTS by just speaking and having my voice translated into text. My watch face gives me a 4 day weather forecast, Highs and Lows for the day, my next schedule entry, oh yea and it does what your crappy citizen will do, tells the time and date.

  5. My 2014 vintage Samsung Gear 2 watch has a speaker thru which it plays notification sounds, and audio or video files (and it doesn’t sound bad at all). So what is new here?

    1. That it doesn’t run on Wear but Tizen. Different platform, different hardware.

      1. True enough….but the speaker serves multiple purposes under Tizen OS, so why would it not be useful ‘for some reason’ under cousin OS Android as well?

  6. Finally! I’ve been wanting them to have one with a speaker!
    But this is to pricy

Comments are closed.