Honor is moving a little deeper into the fitness tracking landscape. The company, which is owned by Huawei, announced the new Honor Band A2 — which represents a pretty huge improvement over the original Honor Band.
The device now features a 0.96-inch OLED display, along with a built-in heart-rate sensor, and IP67 waterproof rating. When it comes to metrics, the device is able to track steps, sleep, and exercise — and it will even give you a notification if you have been sitting around for too long.
Of course, the screen is not just for fitness tracking — it will also deliver notifications such as text messages and phone calls. You can also manage those notifications — so you can dismiss or mute notifications quickly and easily. While the 95mAh battery seems small for somewhat used to the 2,000mAh+ batteries in phones, Honor says the battery will last up to nine days.
Perhaps the best thing about the fitness tracker, however, has nothing to do with its features — the band comes at only $30, which is an excellent price for what seems to be a capable device.
Unfortunately, however, the device is not going to be very widely available. It will only be available in China on June 9 and it comes in black, green, white, and red. The device is compatible with both Android 4.4 and above and iOS 8.0 and above — so the vast majority of people with a reasonably modern phone will be able to make use of the device.
The Honor Band A2 is a follow-up to the Honor Bad A1, which was a pretty good band in its own right. Still, it did not feature a display and as such could not really deliver things like notifications. It was also only available in China — so we do not really anticipate the Honor Band A2 ever expanding beyond Honor’s home country — despite the fact that we might not want to.