Skip to main content

This ridiculous smartwatch has a hidden pair of earbuds inside

Smartwatches are getting weird again, and this time, Huawei is leading the charge. The company has given us a teaser of its next wearable, the Huawei Watch Buds. This one looks like another well-crafted smartwatch from Huawei — until you see its lid opening to reveal two wireless earbuds.

Yeah, you heard that right. The dial area lifts up and presents you with a pair of true wireless earbuds safely nestled in their magnetic cavities. As you might expect, these are not your bulky noise-canceling chunky earbuds or the AirPods-style earbuds with a stem.

Recommended Videos

Huawei Watch Buds (smartwatch with built-in earbuds) to launch on December 2#huawei #huaweiWatchbuds pic.twitter.com/la89MsXdR7

— Anvin (@ZionsAnvin) November 30, 2022

These are bullet-shaped earbuds that are small enough to be fitted inside the smartwatch’s main housing. The design is not novel, though, as they bear a striking similarity with the Nokia True Wireless Earbuds and the Motorola Verve Buds.

What really stands out here is the smartwatch engineering. Huawei’s design team somehow managed to create enough space inside the main body to fit two earbuds, and also added a magnetic wireless charging system in there to keep these audio gizmos juiced up.

Huawei Watch Buds - (2022) Hands On, First Look

If you think that the teaser wasn’t enough, someone shot a video of the smartwatch in what looks like a retail store. As mentioned earlier, the exterior design doesn’t really stand out in terms of aesthetics, but once it pops open, it really takes you by surprise.

The Huawei Watch Buds were supposed to launch in December, but the event was postponed at the last moment. Huawei’s official Weibo channel hasn’t offered any explanation yet, and a fresh launch date hasn’t bee revealed so far, either.

Huawei Central

This is the kind of gizmo wizardry that inspires me, and I’m definitely looking forward to it as my holiday season tech purchase. Will it launch in the U.S.? Highly unlikely. And if this Politico report is anything to go by, it is highly unlikely that you will find it across Europe either.

Bring back weird tech

Huawei’s earbud trickery is quite exciting, but Nokia pulled off a similar stunt earlier this year. The company somewhat revived the iconic XpressMusic lineup in July with the Nokia 5710 XpressAudio — a feature phone with a  few smarts, this retro callback actually hid a pair of earbuds at the top.

The Nokia 5710 XpressAudio phone with its earbuds in the back.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

You just have to slide the cover at the back to reveal a pair of stem-style earbuds. Is it cool? Hell yeah! And for a shelf price of just $90, why wouldn’t it be an impulse buy for a tech nerd? Or it could just be a burner phone for short-lived digital detox resolutions.

But hey, we’re talking about smartwatches, which makes me wonder — where did all the wacky experiments go? Let’s not forget the uber-stylish Calendar Watch, which was a ZTE subsidiary that really made a huge splash or the Nubia Alpha smartwatch from 2019.

The Nubia Alpha smartwatch.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

That last one was far ahead of its time, thanks to a wraparound-style display that made it look like an Omnitrix inspired by the wonderful world of Spielberg’s Ready Player One. It had its kinks, but it was quite a promising project. It’s just a shame that Nubia never made an upgraded version, one that had more reliable contactless hand gesture support.

In 2018, a company named Shell launched a smartwatch that turned into a full-fledged smartphone. You just had to take the round main body off the strap, and two prongs popped out, each with a speaker and mic at the rounded end. In fact, its battery charged using the motion of your hands to generate electricity.

Concept render of the IBM foldable smartwatch.

Want more weirdness? Well, in 2019, computing giant IBM filed a patent for a smartwatch that unfolds to become — wait for it — a tablet. Titled “Variable Display Size for an Electronic Device,” the patent schematics imagined a smartwatch with a foldable panel, in the same year when Samsung was still reeling from the disaster of its first foldable phone.

Right now, weirdness in the smartwatch segment is leaning more toward the innovation side. Take, for example, the Huawei Watch D, which cleverly has a pressure chamber system right inside the watch strap to monitor blood pressure levels without any calibration hassles.

Both Apple and Samsung are eying noninvasive blood glucose monitoring for their upcoming smartwatches. Blood alcohol level measurement and deeper chemical analysis of sweat are also on the evolution radar. A bit of mad smartwatch innovation never hurts, and even if it’s something not especially practical like the Huawei Watch Buds, it’s still exciting to see.

Nadeem Sarwar
Nadeem is a tech and science journalist who started reading about cool smartphone tech out of curiosity and soon started…
Google Pixel Buds Pro 2 get smaller and smarter
Two pairs of Google Pixel Buds Pro 2 in their charge case.

Google's newest wireless earbuds are now (after copious leaks) finally official: The Google Pixel Buds Pro 2 will come in off-white, dark gray, mint, and pink colors when they go on sale in September for $229, an almost $30 increase from the price the company set for the first-gen Pixel Buds Pro.

Google says it has made many improvements both internally and externally, though many of their capabilities have already been added to the first-gen Buds Pro via firmware updates.

Read more
What is Bluetooth multipoint and why your next earbuds or headphones should have it
Sony WH-1000XM4 and WH-1000XM5 seen side-by-side.

Imagine effortlessly switching between audio sources with your Bluetooth headphones without needing to manually disconnect and reconnect each device. This is made possible by Bluetooth multipoint, a feature introduced in 2010 with Bluetooth 4.0.

Bluetooth multipoint allows headphones to connect to multiple devices simultaneously, making it easier to manage tasks like receiving calls while listening to music or joining video conferences. When an incoming call comes in, the headphones can pause the current audio, allowing for a seamless transition to the call—an essential feature for productivity.

Read more
Samsung has no idea what it’s doing with smartwatches
The Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra.

I don’t know what Samsung is doing with its smartwatches, and this leads me to believe that it’s not so sure either.

Samsung has released a new version of its bread-and-butter model annually for a while, with the most recent being the Galaxy Watch 7. And each new model has been joined by another model. The trouble is that each time Samsung has added a different model to the range, it has then seemingly abandoned it soon after. It’s confusing, annoying, and disappointing.
All the Gear, no idea
The Samsung Galaxy Gear 2 Digital Trends

Read more