Huawei’s Revolutionary Watch D Blood Pressure Watch May Come To The West
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Huawei Watch D
Huawei
Huawei announced the Watch D with wrist-based blood pressure monitoring for the Chinese market in 2021 but there are signs it may come to other countries.
The Huawei Watch D has been added to Huawei’s English-language website, and a link to its page was tweeted out by the company’s global Twitter account.
While Huawei has not confirmed which territories will get the Watch D, or when, this online presence suggests the watch will come to selected European markets at the very least.
Such cursory information only merits further attention because the Huawei Watch D is such an unusual device.
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It is effectively a miniaturized version of a traditional blood pressure monitoring cuff. An inflatable airbag sits within the strap, letting it read diastolic and systolic blood pressure to a claimed accuracy of +/-3 mm Hg. This is comparable with a dedicated consumer-grade cuff.
Huawei’s method is quite different to that of the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 blood pressure feature, which is available in limited territories. Samsung uses pulse wave analysis, with data recorded by the optical heart rate monitor hardware, and needs to be regularly re-calibrated using a more traditional blood pressure device.
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The Huawei approach is a standalone feature. As such, the Huawei Watch D offers one of the most unobtrusive and convenient ways to regularly take blood pressure readings.
A Huawei Watch D release in any market is likely to rest on the core feature being passed by the relevant health authority — the necessary step that has caused delays in the roll-out of ECG/EKG features in other wearables.
There are more potential hurdles. The Huawei Watch D runs Huawei’s HarmonyOS software, and this has caused feature restrictions in comparable bands when used with phones not produced by Huawei or Honor.
The Huawei Watch D is expected to cost 449 Euro when, or if, it comes to European markets.