When I used to be a child who tagged together with my mother to the grocery retailer, I cherished sitting within the blood stress monitoring kiosks. The chair was so massive! I might push a button! It would refill a balloon that squeezed round my arm! I had no concept what the numbers meant on display screen, however I knew one thing technological had occurred, and that excited me.

Huawei is reportedly engaged on miniaturizing the blood stress cuff for its next smartwatch, the Huawei Watch D. The idea is much like the cuffs you’re conversant in, although far more concerned than sitting in a chair and letting the machine do the work.

According to a watch instructional video leaked on Weibo, the Huawei Watch D will come bundled with an adjunct that may be connected beneath the watch’s band when it’s essential to take a blood stress measurement. You’ll must measure your wrist circumference for the proper match, and the accent seems to be cumbersome (as you would possibly count on from one thing that inflates).

When in use, the accent will inflate like these grocery retailer blood stress monitor cuffs after which register the outcome with Huawei Health. To take a studying, you must raise your arm throughout your chest to the left aspect, although regulators haven’t but cleared that methodology.

The Huawei Watch D will reportedly measure excessive and low blood stress, in addition to take coronary heart charge readings and run electrocardiograms, which has turn out to be a extra frequent smartwatch function in recent times (see: the Apple Watch and Samsung Galaxy Watch 4). The Watch D is rumored to pack in 32MB of storage and 4GB of reminiscence, much like what’s contained in the Huawei Watch GT 3, one other one of many model’s fitness-centric smartwatches. It additionally helps externally related Bluetooth headphones.

Still, this doesn’t appear to be an precise Apple Watch rival. Instead, it seems to be like Huawei’s try and develop its enterprise after the U.S. authorities pressured the corporate to minimize ties with all issues Google and Android.

Smartwatches have slowly been including medical-grade well being options, and Huawei’s Watch D isn’t model new to blood stress monitoring. The Omron HeartGuide had an built-in cuff that contracted and expanded as you wanted, and it was FDA-approved. In our testing, it was additionally a lot simpler to make use of than a full-blown arm cuff, although it wasn’t snug for every day put on. And therein lies the issue: Being in a position to monitor blood stress with out an inflatable cuff could be an enormous deal, and placing a diagnostic function like that in a smartwatch could be even larger. But an adjunct it’s a must to connect to a watch to be able to take blood stress measurements doesn’t sound like a simple promote, even when it’s 100% correct (which stays to be seen). The value may also be just a little out-of-reach at round $470.

On Huawei’s social media accounts, feedback concerning the Watch D fluctuate between pleasure for a brand new Huawei product and hesitation over the watchband’s cumbersome testing mechanism.

A smartwatch that may actually be a health care provider in your wrist is the holy grail. But till an organization nails the shape issue, we’re not satisfied any system will probably be simpler or extra handy to make use of than a easy sensible blood stress cuff—and today, these cuffs have easy-to-use apps, Bluetooth, wifi, and all.