Keeping children safe while fulfilling the need for them to have a communication device has gone full-on Dick Tracy with the Huawei Children Watch 5X Pro smartwatch. In fact, the Huawei Children Watch 5X Pro will make Dick Tracy green with envy. This thing is super high-tech.
Instead of giving a child a phone that will risk turning them into phubbers early on in their lives, Huawei Huawei Children Watch 5X Pro offers the basic functions of a phone in a watch form factor. It can do what a regular phone can do but because it is so small, it will probably not breed phone addicts.
There are many innovative features in this smartwatch. Perhaps the most interesting of all is the flip-up dual-screen design. It has a regular 1.6” AMOLED touch display and a 1.52” segment display (basically, a digital watch display).
When rotated to the latter, it turns on do not disturb mode that restricts the functionality to calls from parents/guardians, clock function, and alarm clock function. In this mode, it will be silence too.
At the flipped-up position, it watch will go into video call mode. In this mode, you switch between the front 5 MP camera or the 8 MP rear-facing camera on the segment display side.
Beyond video calls, the watch can do a bunch of stuff, including scanning QR codes, object recognitions, translations, payment for public transportation via NFC, chatting with friends, making new friends, and more – all while under the supervision of the parents.
While the apps are carefully curated and are child-safe, parents can further set other limits such as preventing strangers from calling and so on.
And then there’s the geo-fencing that allows parents to set the safety zone as well as mark dangerous areas. To achieve accurate positioning, Huawei has outfitted the Huawei Children Watch 5X Pro with no less than 13 positioning and locations technology, including Beidou, GPS, QZSS, GALILEO, GLONASS, WLAN positioning, indoor positioning, SOS photo assist positioning and more.
It will be able to locate a child within a mall by levels, right down to the stores. Among the 13 location methods, there are two that will enable locating the child in the event the battery runs out or the child is in a place where there is absolutely no signal of any kind.
The smartwatch is water resistant to 20 meters (66 feet) (IPX8 rated), allowing it to be worn when swimming in pools. Finally, the watch can be removed from the band to be used as a handy camera if so desired.
The Huawei Children Watch 5X Pro is available to order in China with a starting price of 1,998 yuan which is about US$286 today.
Images: Huawei [CH].
