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Huawei is traveling at two speeds and this test of the new Watch GT 2 Pro , paired with the P Smart 2021 smartphone , fully confirms this. On the one hand we have a smartwatch with an elegant but sporty line and with interesting features, first of all a long autonomy. On the other hand, an entry level smartphone that fails to hit the mark, simply because the features it is equipped with do not allow it .
Trump's ban does not allow Huawei to express its full
potential, and there is a lot of potential as we have seen in recent years,
forcing it to use an outdated platform on the P smart 2021, to focus instead on
the next Mate 40, which instead will be able to count on a new generation 5 nm
processor .
A real shame, because the two products work well together,
leaving many regrets for what this P Smart 2021 could have been without the
ban. In this sense, good news has arrived in the last few hours, with a first
opening of the United States that should allow Huawei to return to buying
components made in the USA.
Design
Huawei has taken care of the design and materials of the
Watch GT 2 Pro very well, with the use of sapphire glass to protect the display
and titanium for the case , resistant up to 5 ATM. Even the lower part, the one
that houses the sensors in contact with the skin, is made of glass, a truly
painstaking care, which also justifies the final cost of € 299. The design is a
mix of sportiness and elegance, the Watch GT 2 Pro is at ease both during
sports and in everyday life.
Charging is wireless, so there are no connectors on the
body, a visual advantage, and two physical buttons are available for
controlling the device. The strap we tested is made of excellent quality
rubber, but there are also other materials, including leather.
The dimensions are quite generous, more suited to the male
audience than to the female one, the ergonomics are still good, despite a
weight that is not the most contained.
Huawei P Smart 2021, on the other hand, aims at a clearly
different price range. While the Watch is placed in a medium-high segment, P
Smart 2021 aims to be Huawei's new entry level proposal in the smartphone field
.
The materials used in this case are glass and plastic, with
the backcover offering a slight mirror effect but very sensitive to
fingerprints. The fingerprints reader is on the right side, under the power
button, while on the back stands the photographic module, which protrudes
slightly from the body.
The screen has the hole for the camera at the top, in the
center, with a film applied directly from the factory. In contrast to the
competition, here is the 3.5 mm jack. Weight and thickness are not the most
contained, respectively of 206 grams and 9.3 mm, but the reason is mainly due
to the battery, large and which allows a really high autonomy, which is then
the main strength of this smartphone .
Hardware
Looking at the technical specification of the two products,
you can see the effects of the ban that Huawei is undergoing at the moment. The
Watch GT 2 Pro is powered by a Kirin A1 processor, already seen in other
smartwatches from the Chinese house, equipped with Bluetooth 5.1 and GPS. We
then find 4 GB of internal memory and all the sensors that are expected from a
product of this type, from the one for the heartbeat to the detection of SpO2.
The screen is a 1.39-inch AMOLED with a resolution of 454x454 pixels, with good
peak brightness, for optimal use in direct sunlight. There is also a
microphones and a small speaker, with which to make calls directly from the
smartwatch, as long as it is connected to the phone, but the NFC is missing,
practically useless since there are no functions able to exploit it
Moving on to the P Smart 2021, the technical data sheet is
the main weakness of this smartphone, especially the processor. It is in fact a
Kirin 710A, in a variant, however, at 14 nm, against the 12 nm used until a few
months ago by this same SoC. Equipped with Mali G51 GPU, 4 GB of RAM and 128 GB
of internal memory, it offers less power than what you can get from the
competition in the 200 euro price range (the P Smart costs 229 euro in the
list).
There is also some lag and jamming during use, widely
bearable, more serious are the absence of NFC and above all of the Dual Band
Wi-Fi , a standard that cannot really be missing at the gates of 2021. Present
instead the Bluetooth 5.1, in this case, Huawei has managed to implement a more
up-to-date standard.
The screen is a 6.67-inch IPS with Full HD + resolution, a
panel of decent quality but with shallow blacks, while the maximum brightness
allows for use even outdoors without problems.
A total of four cameras are available, the first 48
Megapixel with f / 1.8 aperture, the second 8 Megapixel with f / 2.4 aperture
and finally two 2 Megapixel cams for macros and depth of field detection, while
the cam front is 32 Megapixel. The photographic sector works well and is in
line with that of other products in the same price range. The definition of day
is good, at night the night mode is effective, after all it was Huawei that
first brought it to levels of excellence, while generating visible noise in
this case. The videos are quite stable, in general the photographic sector does
not disappoint but does not stand out from the crowd.
The undisputed strength of this product is instead the
battery, from 5000 mAh, which combined with a light operating system and the
absence of Google Mobile Services offers a really high autonomy . Two days
without recharging, with average use, are an achievable goal, while recharging
the 22W mode is available, effective in giving hours of autonomy in the face of
a few minutes of recharging.
Software
Huawei Watch GT 2 Pro uses the LiteOS operating system,
which we recently encountered in the review of Honor 's Watch GS Pro , a
smartwatch that incorporates practically all the features of the Watch GT 2 Pro
but made with less valuable materials. On the smartphone, on the other hand,
all functions are managed by the Huawei Health application . Pairing between
the two devices is very simple and immediate, after all they are part of the
same product ecosystem. The app offers tons of data, from calorie consumption
to daily distance traveled, through workouts, heart rate and sleep analysis.
There is also no shortage of data on SpO2 and stress levels.
LiteOS is a closed operating system, which we have come to
know over time, and offers everything you need without the possibility of
installing new applications. In general, we feel the need for greater fluidity
in the passages from one screen to another, on the other hand, however, the
Watch GT 2 Pro offers a truly excellent autonomy , which easily covers a week
of use, but it all depends on how much you use the GPS. . Much attention is
paid to monitoring sports activities, there are dozens of them and they cover a
very high number of disciplines.
Huawei P Smart 2021 instead is based on Android 10 with HMS,
therefore without Google services. We have already used several Huawei
smartphones in the past (you can also consult our guide to HMS ), it is
possible to live with the absence of Google, especially if you have the skills
to better manage the sources from which to draw to find applications. In recent
months, however, App Gallery, Huawei's proprietary app store, has made great
strides and several streaming applications have arrived, from Sky Go to DAZN ,
via Infinity, Chili, Rai Play and Mediaset Play (Amazon Prime Video is downloadable
directly from the Amazon app store), as well as various banking applications
(Ubi Banca, My Carta BCC, Banca Sella, Hype, Mediolanum for example).
Spending a minimum of time it is possible to configure the
phone to the best, net of the absence of services such as Google Classroom ,
widely used today for distance learning. In short, even if it is not yet an
optimal situation, using HMS is not impossible at all and the integration
between smartwatch and smartphone is really very good. The problem of the P
Smart 2021 is not the software, but it is a hardware that is no longer in step
with the times, unfortunately Huawei had no alternative in this regard.