Unboxing the Huawei GT5 Pro

The Specifics

This is the Unboxing of the Huawei Watch GT5 Pro. While this is from about 6 months ago, as of this update, there are a few things that I want everyone to know about this and the potential stigma that Huawei products have here in the US:

1. I’ve been wearing this device nearly every day since it arrived. It doesn’t have its own cellular radio, so it requires a smartphone to get any and all information.
2. As a mobile device expert, with well over 25 years worth of experience in PocketPC, Android, and iOS devices, I’ve learned a couple of tricks related to watching what traffic slides across the device through any available internet connection. The device doesn’t seem to be spying on me (and honestly, I don’t have anything interesting or strategic to offer anyone. If anyone WAS monitoring me, they’ve LONG since moved on, as I lead a pretty mundane life.
3. Due to Huawei’s general verboten status here in the US, I had to tell a white lie during setup and indicate that I lived in Canada. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to set the device up at all. Regardless of geographic location, you can still change units of measurement from metric to imperial, which made the device’s health reports and notifications relevant for me.
4. Like Google, Huawei has its own app store, health app, etc. Because it runs a custom flavor of Android, the Watch GT 5 Pro will not run apps from the Play Store. If it doesn’t come from its own app store, you can’t install it on the watch, which is disappointing, but understandable.
5. The battery life on this device is AMAZING! (Even after 6 months of constant use.). A single charge will last 6-7 days, with a solid week’s worth of health and sleep tracking, phone notifications, etc.
6. I’ve taken to wearing the Watch GT5 Pro AND either the Apple Watch Ultra 2 or the Samsung Watch Ultra (on separate wrists) so I can compare the way the Watch GT5 Pro tracks health, sleep and movement data compared to the other two. My wife says I look way stupid and too much like a geek.  She is likely right.  While it may look strange, its clear that all three wearables measure health related data very differently. They are NOT comparable or similar. They just aren’t.This really means that it doesn’t matter what device you use (Huawei, Samsung, Apple, Google, TicWatch, etc.) but that you should pick one and ride that train with your healthcare professional(s) so they understand and can see the relevance in the variation of the data you will collect in their connected health app.This is severely disappointing to me, as there doesn’t seem to be any corrolation or similarity to the measurements the devices take. For example, step counting calculations are very different from device to device. The Huawei may count 1000 steps, the AW may count 1025 steps, and the Samsung may count 1050 steps (it doesn’t matter which device counts are actually “correct,” the point is, when wearing one some or all at the same time, you’d expect to have ALL of them count the same number of steps you take. They don’t. They also don’t count flights of stairs the same way, either, which is also annoying.If these devices can’t agree on something as simple as a step of flight of stairs count, how the heck can you trust it to be accurate with ANY of the health data and metrics it collects? The answer here is simple – pick one as THE master device and THE device of record and use THAT one to report to your doctor or medical professional of choice. Pick a device, baseline the data, and then start tracking and reporting results to your healthcare professionals.
7. None of the data your health app/device of record collects, is transferrable to another app or device. You can’t transfer health realated data you collected on this or any other watch/health app to any other device/health app and pick up where the old one left off.  This means that if you DO ever decide to switch from one device to another, you may have to rebaseline everything and make adjustments to your movement, sleep, or exercise practices to insure that you’re hitting the numbers your doctor says you need to hit.

Conclusion

The Huawei Watch GT5 Pro is an awesome device, and while I know the Watach GT6 and GT6 Pro have hit the market at about the same price as the GT5 Pro when I got it, it is STILL a great device. It looks awesome, is consistent with the measurements it takes and records for me, and if it were the device that I absolutely relied on everyday to do something else other than deal with phone notifications and telling time, it would be just as good as any other device I have and use.