Huawei Mate Watch rumoured to launch in October, running HarmonyOS

According to the most recent rumour, Huawei is getting ready to launch a new series of smartwatches, adopting its often-used 'Mate' moniker on a watch for the first time.

The trademark for Mate Watch was applied for earlier in the year, and a tweet from Slashleaks contributer @Rodent950 on Twitter suggests it'll be the first watch to run HarmonyOS. 

If that software name sounds familiar, it's because it first started cropping up more widely around the time Huawei's official partnership with Google was forced to end. It was touted as Huawei's replacement OS for Android.  

If Huawei’s schedule has kept up then the Mate Watch is the first HongMengOS powered smartwatch, will be released with the Mate 40 series.
rumors say it would happen during Chinese National Day. #HuaweiMate40Series #HuaweiMateWatch

— Teme (特米)(@RODENT950) June 23, 2020

The leaker suggests in the tweet that not only will the Mate Watch launch alongside the Mate 40 series, but it will be announced on 1 October too.

It's worth noting, given how unfamiliar the leaker is to us, we are dubious about this rumour. 

With that said, Huawei did officially announce HarmonyOS as a platform for smart inter-connected devices almost a year ago, and is already in use on smart TVs that it sells in China. 

Current Huawei watches already run a custom Huawei software called LiteOS, which - again - is a lightweight platform used for various smart connected devices. In many ways, HarmonyOS is its natural successor.

While there's a possibility that HarmonyOS could replace LiteOS on Huawei's watches, the actual user interface that customers interact with might not need to change, and so remains mostly the same from the outside. 

If that outward software/interface did change, that would be more surprising, given how much development is going into adding new features and capabilities. Especially with the most recent update that came with the Watch GT 2e adding a plethora of new sports tracking modes and watch faces. 

If HarmonyOS is more power efficient than LiteOS, there's a possibility that it would lead to a watch with better, more fluid functionality and graphics, that doesn't lose the two-week battery life that makes the current Watch GT models so appealing. 

As for switching to the Mate name, it would see the watch join a brand family within Huawei that covers multiple product categories; like the MatePad tablets and MateBook laptops, so again it does make sense. 

Whether or not any of this actually happens is yet to be seen. As we said, we're a little sceptical, but wouldn't be completely surprised by any of it. 

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