Category: Huawei

One of the more popular and well designed Android Wear watches of the past couple of years has been the Huawei Watch.  The watch, which is still readily available, has outstanding specs, comes in a variety of styles and most of them were priced reasonably well (there are a few higher end luxury models too).  It seems fitting then that the Huawei Watch is one of the first watches already out there to get the Android Wear 2.0 update.  The update has started rolling out to owners and while it will take a few days (or even weeks) for everyone to get it, know that the update is coming and bringing all the new features of 2.0 with it.  It should be noted that the roll out is very limited right now and only a few people have reported seeing it.  The official statement from Huawei is that it will be out at the end of the month – but clearly it is either leaked or being rolled out slowly.

If you haven’t kept up, Wear 2.0 brings a lot of changes to the user experience, stand alone apps, Material Design, improvements in the use of Wi-Fi and sensors and Messaging.  It is a significant

update.

Huawei has become the latest manufacture to indicate which of their phones will be receiving the Android Nougat update.  The news is certainly good for those who have purchased one of their flagship devices over the course of the last 18 months or so and it means that starting in the first quarter of next year, updates should be rolling out.  As for the list, it’s all the ones you would hope for and expect to get the update:

• Huawei Mate 8
• Huawei P9
• Huawei P9 Plus
• Huawei P9 lite
• Huawei Nova
• Huawei Nova Plus

The update will come via the EMUI 5.0 update which is Huawei’s Android UI and flavor of Android.  EMUI 5.0 shipped with the Mate 8 and P9 so those devices are already running Nougat.

Last week I posted that Huawei had clarified their software update policy on the Honor 8.  This week the Chinese manufacture has added the Honor 5x to the list of devices under the new upgrade policy.  That means both of the latest devices, for the next 24 months, will see major and minor updates.  It is good news for sure as the Honor 5x has been a popular device (and at $189 unlocked, it’s not hard to see why) and Huawei is doing their part to keep their devices up-to-date.

Well done Huawei.

If you are considering a Huawei Honor device as your next Android phone, there is some good news for you today.  Taylor Wimberly, the eCommerce Customer Acquisition Manager for the company here in the US, posted on his Google+ account some exciting news around support for Honor devices.  In essence, if you buy one, you are going to be supported with software updates – minor and major – for up to 24 months.

From this year we are making a commitment to provide customers with access to new features (at least once every three months during the first 12 months) for up to 24 months following each product launch.

This is great news as one of the biggest problems in Androidville is device updates from manufactures.  Huawei is giving it a good effort and that should make you more confident in buying their devices.

Chinese manufacture Huawei has become a dominant player in the global Android phone market but has struggled to gain traction here in the United States.  That has changed a little bit with the launch of the Huawei built Nexus 6P and the company is looking to capitalize on that success.  2016 the company is planning on making a significant push into the US market and it will be lead by their new 6″ phablet device, the Mate 8.

The Mate 8 was announced last month in China but yesterday at CES 2016 it was announced it was going global.  It mighty impressive specs that make it a true flagship device for the company.  While it won’t launch immediately here in the US – it will be in Europe, South America and Asia first before it hits the US and UK – it will be here by the end of the 1st quarter.  To start, it has a 6″ Full HD 1080p display, is powered by the Huawei Kirin 950 Octa-Core processor running at 2.3Ghz and has an ARM Cortex A72 co-processor running at 1.5Ghz.  It will come in two variants as far as RAM and storage are concerned.  The base model will come with 3GB or RAM and 32GB of storage while the upper end will have 4GB of RAM and 64GB of Storage.  Interestingly, the upper end model will also support dual SIMs while the base model will be single SIM.

The number of manufactures who have committed to bringing the Android Marshmallow update to their devices has already been impressive.  Today it got just that much better.  Chinese manufacture Huawei (who also makes the new Nexus 6P) has committed to bringing the latest version of Android to no less than 15 of their devices.  The news came from a leaked document on GizmoChina that points to the laundry list of devices that will be seeing Marshmallow.  While dates and timelines were not covered, clearly the company is set on getting the update out to a lot of their devices.  That is only good news given the features (like Doze) and security benefits that Android Marshmallow brings.

Review of Android Marshmallow