Honor Watch GS 3 unveiled with stainless steel body, improved positioning and health tracking

Honor is expanding its selection of smartwatches with a new GS model. The Honor Watch GS 3 is aiming for a sleek look, instead of the rugged watch design of the GS Pro. That makes it more suitable for causal and even stylish wear, but it does impact the battery.

The watch has a 3D curved glass with a simple graduated bezel. The body is made out of 316L low-carbon stainless steel measures 10.5 mm thick and weighs 44g, the diameter is 45.9 mm. It comes in silver, gold and black colorways, each with a different wrist strap. The first two get Nappa leather straps, the black one (dubbed “Racing Pioneer”) has a durable rubber strap instead.

The Honor Watch GS 3 comes in three colorways, the first two have Nappa leather wrist straps

The GS 3 has a 1.43” AMOLED display with 326 ppi for sharp graphics (466 x 466 px resolution). That is a fraction larger than the Pro display (1.39”, also 326 ppi).

On the other side of the watch is an 8-channel PPG module that targets 97% minimum accuracy when tracking your heart rate. It also does 24/7 blood oxygen tracking and sleep tracking (with 200+ suggestions to improve your sleep) thanks to Honor Health 5.0.

For outdoor tracking, the new watch uses dual-frequency positioning with support for the five major satellite constellations. Compared to the MagicWatch 2 (2019), positioning accuracy is improved by 167% while the initial position lock is acquired in half the time. There are over 100 sports modes, including 10 “professional sports modes”.

The watch is water resistant up to 5 ATM, so you can take it in the pool. Its suite of sensors also includes an accelerometer, gyro, compass, air pressure and ambient light sensors.

The watch promises up to 14 days of typical use or 30 hours of continuous GPS tracking. The good news is that you only need 5 minutes of charging to get enough power to last you the whole day. A full charge of the 451 mAh battery should take just under an hour.

Still, the GS Pro watch offered 14 days of typical use, though GPS tracking was more efficient and the battery lasted 48 hours.

Several basic apps come preinstalled, including a music player (there is 4 GB of on-board storage), alarm and timer, plus a remote camera shutter button and a way to decline incoming calls with predefined text messages. You can install additional apps, but keep in mind this isn’t a Google Wear watch (it runs LiteOS on an Apollo4 chipset). There are also a few China-specific features like Alipay and a smart card for public transport. NFC is available.

The Honor Watch GS 3 is already available on pre-order in China. The Racing Pioneer model is priced at CNY 1,300 ($205/€180/₹15,000), while the two versions with a leather strap are CNY 1,500. For comparison, the Watch GS Pro starts at CNY 1,000 in China right now (was CNY 1,100 originally).

Source (in Chinese)