Sadly, folks, it was too good to be true. Huawei’s original Watch does not have NFC built in, and it won’t be getting Android Pay support. You’ll have to wait for the Huawei Watch 2.
After this story went live last week, we’ve seen many reports from elsewhere refuting the initial advice we had from Huawei. They were right to do so. Our information was wrong, and sadly we weren’t to know … until today.
If we had our time again, we’d have been a bit more critical of the information received, and a bit more cautious in just publishing it. However, at the same time, we are entitled to have some confidence in what official company reps tell us. This time, it just wasn’t meant to be.
To our readers, Huawei offer their apologies for getting hopes up. We offer ours too, for reporting this before we’d taken the opportunity to fully consider what we had been told.
Sorry guys. We really wish the original Huawei Watch had NFC in it … because it would’ve made it the perfect Android Wear device. We’ll just have to wait until the new one comes out.
This is true, it does not support. But could it?
No
That mistake would have sold some unwanted old stock lying around.
Is this the same Huawei rep that confirmed a year ago they were developing another Nexus device?
No.
I’ve posted comments on this article and the other Huawei AW2.0 article, and both have disappeared / not been approved. What’s the deal?
Might’ve been automatically moderated. I’ll check.
Looks like huawei are playing cheap tricks to sell the left over watches by making fake gossips
I don’t think so; pretty ordinary look for them as a brand to deliberately put provably wrong information out in the public arena. There’s two likely outcomes; the information is right, and NFC is coming to the HW1, or two, a mistake was made, and there’s no NFC.
Deliberately misleading? I don’t think so.
Any updates, Chris?
Sadly yes. Huawei have apologised profusely; their advice was wrong. No NFC in the HW1. :
Spewing. Looks like I’m importing an Urbane 2 LTE after all
Now that you started to generate false hopes sitting up on the wrong train, what about to check the HW whether that really has an NFC somewhere? Just my 50 cents.
Happiest man alive to hear this.
So which is it – one Huawei rep says it does have NFC and it’s in testing, other reps are telling other sites that it in fact does not.
Doesn’t fill me with confidence that the company really knows what the heck is going on.
Nor does it inspire that confidence in us, @dangoodes:disqus. I wish we had a higher confidence level on this. Here’s word for word what we’ve been told:
The information (about the presence of NFC in Huawei Watch One) came directly from Huawei’s product manager for wearables. He was of the opinion that the Watch One has NFC, but that it needs to be tested with Android Wear 2.0. Google and not Huawei are doing that testing.
The ProdMan mistakenly sent the info thinking of HW2.
HW1 indeed does have an NFC chip in it.
It is worth to be explored. Isn’t it?
We know the product manager had the wrong info. There’s no NFC in the HW1.
Cool, be good to have this in my Huawei Watch as my Gear S3’s Samsung Pay is never going to get support from any popular banks in Australia.
Wow top effort Huawei, we are so used to seeing tech companies release a product & then forget about it. What a great bonus for your loyal customers!
Delightful surprise. In a way that’s always been a way to build a brand. Surprise and delight your customer and give them more than they expect.
I have always thought the original huawei watch was the best by far with the amoled 400×400 res screen, speaker, nice size battery, awesome looks and now surprise a dormant nfc chip. it still amazing me after all this time. I don’t understand why the new huawei are less of a watch than the original. smaller screen, less res, and the big thing gorilla glass. I have never had a protector on my watch and there is not a scratch on it, if it was gorilla glass it would be destroyed by now. I love my original huawei watch and… Read more »
I haven’t seen any company backing up and supporting their older generation devices at such a level…great work Huawei 🙂
Oh wow! That’s an unexpected surprise! ?
Yeah! 🙂
Oh… cool.
If this is true the Huawei Watch 1 will remain the best Android Smartwatch in 2017.
But I doubt that this is true..
Isn’t there some teardown to prove that information?
I don’t know how reputable this site is – could you please ask Huawei @archon810:disqus?
Androidpolice is the only site I trust.
According to what Google told us and what AC got from Huawei, this doesn’t seem likely at this point.
Thanks for clarifying! 🙂
AP posted the same article citing Ausdroid as the source. They obviously trust Ausdroid more than you.
..and Ausdroid was wrong. What a suprise. /s
As AP also posted this by your own reasoning AP was also wrong and yet you trust them only.
To be more accurate I would say Huawei was wrong as it was their product manager of wearables.