Great battery life and a fairly low price, combined with an assortment of features you’d expect to pay more for, meant the Huawei Band 2 Pro was a strong fitness band, albeit one with plenty of faults.
That’s why we’re hoping there will be a Huawei Band 3 Pro, and also hoping that Huawei will learn from the current band and fix the main issues it faced.
At the end of this article you’ll find the main improvements we’d like to see, but before that here’s everything we know or suspect about the Huawei Band 3 Pro so far.
Cut to the chase
- What is it? The next Huawei fitness band
- When is it out? Unknown, but maybe late 2018
- What will it cost? Probably at least $69.99 / £79.99 (around AU$140)
Huawei Band 3 Pro release date and price
There’s no news on when the Huawei Band 3 Pro might launch, but the Huawei Band 2 Pro was announced in July 2017, which is almost a year ago, so there’s a chance we’ll see it soon.
Given that we’ve not heard anything about it yet July might be unlikely, but a little later, perhaps at IFA 2018 (which takes place from 31 August – 5 September), is very possible.
As for the price, we’re guessing there too for now, but the Huawei Band 2 Pro launched for $69.99 / £79.99 (around AU$140), so there’s a fair chance the Huawei Band 3 Pro will be similarly cheap, though if anything the cost might go up.
Hopefully Huawei's next werable will still be cheap
Huawei Band 3 Pro news and rumors
We haven’t yet heard any rumors that specifically talk about the Huawei Band 3 Pro, though back in January the company hinted that it might build artificial intelligence into future wearables, much as it has done with phones like the Huawei P20.
It’s not clear exactly what this AI would do on a fitness wearable, but it could potentially for example more accurately predict the type and amount of exercise you’re likely to do or should be doing.
Other than that, we’d expect a return of the Band 2 Pro’s features, including water resistance, a heart rate monitor and GPS, but with some improvements or additional features added to the mix.
What we want to see
From inaccurate metrics to a clunky app there are lots of issues with the Huawei Band 2 Pro, so below you’ll find some of the main things we hope to see improved or added for the Huawei Band 3 Pro.
1. More accurate heart rate readings
The Band 2 Pro has a heart rate monitor but it's not a very good one
One of the biggest issues we found with the Huawei Band 2 Pro was that it provided inaccurate heart rate readings, and its VO2 max readings were often incorrect too.
For the money it costs the mere fact that it has a heart rate monitor is pretty good, and things like GPS and step tracking seemed fairly accurate, but we’d really like to see the heart rate readings improved for the Huawei Band 3 Pro. If they are, it could get a lot closer to being a top tier budget wearable.
2. A slicker app
Another issue we have with the Huawei Band 2 Pro is its app, as it’s clunky to navigate and doesn’t let you change your step goal from the default of 10,000.
A custom step goal should be an easy fix, and while making the app as a whole more intuitive might be a bigger job, it would make the Huawei Band range more competitive with the likes of Fitbit, which has a much slicker app, so we’d like to see a new version of the app land alongside the Huawei Band 3 Pro.
3. An improved design
The design of the Huawei Band Pro range could do with an overhaul
The Huawei Band 2 Pro’s design isn’t bad, but it’s somewhat uninspired, and the latch it uses can pop open more easily than we’d like, so at a minimum we want to see a more secure clasp on the Huawei Band 3 Pro, but ideally the whole design will get on overhaul so we get a more stylish device, rather than what’s currently a quite generic-looking fitness tracker.
4. Contactless payments
While the Huawei Band 2 Pro has a lot of fitness features it’s lacking in other ways, with no NFC and therefore no support for contactless payments being a key one.
It’s not a feature we’d really expect on a device of this price but it’s still something we’d love to see, so hopefully Huawei will consider it for the next model.
5. Full messages on your wrist
You can get message notifications on your wrist on the Huawei Band 2 Pro, but you can only preview the first couple of lines, rather than seeing the whole of longer messages, which is a feature we’d like to see added for the Huawei Band 3 Pro.
We don’t need to be able to respond to them, but being able to read an entire message could save us digging out our phones.
6. A more customizable interface
We'd like to be able to customize the clock on the Huawei Band 3 Pro
The interface on the Huawei Band 2 Pro is alright, but there’s not much you can do to tweak it to your liking. Customization options are limited to simply choosing which order the data screens are in when you cycle through them.
What we’d most like to see is the ability to alter the watch face, changing how that appears and what things it shows other than the time, much like you can with a smartwatch.
7. A color screen
This isn’t as vital as some of the things on our list, but a color screen would make the Huawei Band 3 Pro a bit nicer to interact with and could also open up more customization options for the interface, so it would definitely be appreciated, just as long as it doesn’t affect the battery life too much. If it does, then maybe an option to switch between color or black and white would be good.