Honor launches the Watch GS 3 with a stainless-steel body and an AMOLED display

Honor has been teasing the Watch GS 3 since mid-2021, and yet has waited until the launch of the Magic V to introduce it as a potential companion wearable. Then again, its 1.43-inch, 326-ppi AMOLED display might still be taken as modern enough by many consumers.

This screen is kept on with a 451mAh battery, rated for up to 14 days of battery life, although this might drop to 30 hours with its GPS on. On that note, the Watch GS supports quintuple GPS/Galileo/GLONASS/Beidou/NAVIC positioning. The spec is rated to reduce latency by 47%, while improving accuracy by up to 167%, compared to previous models.

The GS 3 also debuts the long-promised 8-channel PPG heart rate monitor, slated to upgrade to a 97% accuracy compared to the previous generation. The new smartwatch also has NFC for payments (via Alipay in Honor's native China).

This hardware is powered by 4GB of RAM and an Apollo4 chipset rather than something like the Snapdragon Wear 4100 platform, which runs the LiteOS also seen on some Huawei wearables. It confers about 100 sports modes on the Watch GS.

Then again, two of the Honor Watch GS 3's color SKUs (silver and gold) come with Nappa leather straps out of the box, which may be less conducive to working out in them. Its black Racing Pioneer Edition, on the other hand, has a rubber band in a matching color. It goes for 1,299 yuan (~US$204), whereas the others are set at 1,499 yuan (~$235).