Chinese consumer electronics giant Huawei is launching the Porsche Design edition of the Huawei Watch 2 in Europe. As expected, the wearable shares the same hardware characteristics with the standard model, and as such, the Huawei Watch 2 Porsche Design differentiates itself by adopting a slightly different exterior design. However, as was previously the case with the Huawei Mate 9 Porsche Design smartphone, this change in appearance comes at a rather high cost.
Like the standard model, the wearable features a circular 1.2-inch AMOLED touchscreen display with a resolution of 390 by 390 pixels. The device is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 2100 system-on-chip (SoC) which houses four 32-bit ARM Cortex-A7 CPU cores clocked at up to 1.1GHz, as well as the Snapdragon X5 LTE modem supporting a variety of network technologies. The device should also carry 768MB of RAM and 4GB of internal storage and be powered by a 420mAh battery rated for up to 48 hours of mixed usage. Other details worth mentioning include Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.1 LE connectivity, A-GPS and GLONASS support, NFC, and an IP68 certificate for dust and water-resistance. The smartwatch runs Android Wear 2.0, meaning that it should offer support for Android Pay, access to standalone applications through the Google Play Store for wearables, and the Google Assistant.
As to what makes the Porsche Design variant of the Huawei Watch 2 special, the smartwatch features the automaker’s name on the chronograph bezel surrounding a new Porsche-inspired watch face and also carries a leather strap complete with red stitching reminiscent of Porsche’s signature color. Ultimately, this bit of exclusivity comes at a price as the Huawei Watch 2 Porsche Design is available in Europe for €795, which translates to approximately $925 at today’s conversion rate, whereas the standard model had a launch price of €329 on the old Continent, i.e. around $383. Considering the fact that the only changes to the watch are external in nature, there is a considerable price gap between the standard model and the newly introduced variant, though this difference is not entirely surprising given how the €699 Huawei Mate 9 doubled its price after the Chinese phone maker released it with a Porsche Design logo.