Huawei Watch GT 2 gets NFC as part of latest update

Update: Following reports that NFC (in limited form) was being added to the Huawei Watch GT 2 in some countries, Huawei has now confirmed that this isn't happening and that the company has no plans to make NFC available outside China.

Original article follows...

One core smartwatch feature that was surprisingly missing from the Huawei Watch GT 2 at launch was NFC. Its absence was even more surprising because Chinese units did include it, but now the rest of the world is catching up, thanks to the latest software update.

That’s right, it seems NFC was built into the Huawei Watch GT 2 but for some reason disabled at a software level, and now it’s being enabled, with software version 1.0.2.28. According to themrpc this update has started rolling out in countries including the US, Germany and the Philippines, with more likely to follow soon.

However, before you get too excited it’s worth noting that Huawei’s implementation of NFC here looks to be very limited.

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Improved HR monitoring but no contactless payments

Based on the update change log it seems NFC is only currently used by the company’s OneHop app, a service which lets you connect the Huawei Watch GT 2 to a Huawei phone so you can use the latter to customize the watch face.

So in other words if you were hoping to make contactless payments with your Huawei Watch GT 2 you still seemingly can’t, at least for now. But with NFC enabled it might only be a matter of time before that functionality is added.

The software update also improves the accuracy of the heart rate monitor during workouts, adds additional sound settings, and makes a few other minor tweaks and improvements. So it’s worth getting even if you don’t care about the limited NFC functionality.