If you have been looking for a “smart” wearable and would not want to invest in Android Wear or Apple Watch platform due to their high price tags, Huawei’s got a little something for you. It will be releasing the Honor Band Z1 to Malaysia’s Vmall.my online store on January 19th 2016 at 3:08pm, for the low, low price of RM259. There was a registration of interest last week, and for those who did, they will receive an email when the Honor Band Z1 is in stock later today. The Band Z1, also known as Band Zero in China, was first seen during its unveiling in London last year.
One of the factors that contributed to its low cost is due to its operating system, or the lack thereof. It runs on a lightweight, proprietary OS similar to that on the Huawei TalkBand. But this time, it has a killer feature — apparently it now does third party notifications so you can pipe almost all smartphone notifications to the Honor Band Z1, through the Huawei Wear app, available on Android and iOS. Not sure if the third party app notifications feature will work on iOS though, but I’ve seen it on Android before.
Being a wearable, besides caller ID, SMS, email, and third party app notifications, there are also the obligatory health features, namely pedometer and sleep tracking. Through step counting and run tracking, it can estimate how many of your calories are burned, and through the same sensors, it (supposedly) could detect when you are asleep and track how deep is your sleep too. The Honor Band Z1 is also IP68 dust tight and water resistant.
Smarts aside, this is one good-looking wearable too. Huawei/Honor said the Band Z1 adopts a “modern Scandinavian design”, with a clean, circular bezel without any buttons whatsoever; all controls are done only through the touch display. Speaking of which, it is a 1.06-inch OLED that is not always-on, but rather, you need to wake it up by flicking your wrist or tapping the touchscreen. The older Huawei TalkBand B1 had a bad OLED that deteriorates after just a few months of use, so hopefully this problem is no longer here on the Honor Band Z1.
The battery life is said to last around three to four days on a single charge. It charges through a magnetic dock, connected through four Pogo pins. Another nice thing to know is that the same charger also works with the Huawei Watch.
And now for some Honor Band Z1 specifications:
- Dimensions and weight: 38 x 9.5 mm and about 25 grams
- Strap type and length: Hypoallergenic TPU fabric; 244.4 mm (longer variant) and 229.4 mm (shorter variant)
- Colors: Black strap (black aluminum body), plus White and Khaki straps (silver aluminum body)
- Durability: IP68 dust tight and water resistant up to 1.5 meter
- Display: 1.06-inch OLED luminescent touchscreen, 128 x 128 resolution
- Processor: Cortex M4 STM32F411
- Memory: 128KB RAM, 512KB flash memory (microprocessor)
- Bluetooth: Bluetooth 4.1 Low Energy (2.4GHz frequency, 10-meter range)
- Sensors: Accelerometer and Cap(acitive) sensor
- Ports: Magnetic dock, connected through four Pogo pins; pinhole to power on/off or reboot
- Battery: 70mAh; 3–4 days of normal use, 14 days in standby mode
- System requirements: Android 4.4.4+ or iOS 7.0+
- Officially supported models: Huawei G7, G8, Mate 7, Mate S, Nexus 6P, P8, P8lite, Y550; Honor 6, Honor 6 Plus, Honor 7, Honor 4C, Honor 4X; iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPhone 5s, iPhone 5c, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6s; Samsung Galaxy Note 3, Note 4, Note 5, S5, S6, S6 edge, S6 edge+
- Warranty: One-year warranty; six-month one-to-one exchange warranty
All things considered, for RM259, the Honor Band Z1 is still an unbelievably-cheap smart wearable, especially if it’s true that, at least on Android, it could mirror all of the smartphone’s third party app notifications. Remember that the Huawei TalkBand B1 was RM499 when it was launched, and its successor, the TalkBand B2 is still RM558; though the TalkBands are also Bluetooth earpieces.
Honor Band Z1 comes in three color straps — Black, White, and Khaki. The Black strap model has a black aluminum body, while the White and Khaki models comes with a silver aluminum body. Visit http://www.vmall.my/wearables/honor-band-z1.html to get one.
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