The original Huawei Watch has apparently had NFC this whole time, could get Android Pay

Update: Another Huawei rep is now telling Android Central that the watch is not getting Android Pay.

The original Huawei Watch is a work of art to a lot of people, and it’s one of the best looking smartwatches we’ve ever seen. That’s why many were disappointed to see the company drastically change its design language on the Huawei Watch 2. Now, though, it seems that most users won’t have any reason to upgrade, at least if a recent report is true…

AusDroid was apparently given a statement directly from Huawei that revealed that the original Huawei Watch does indeed have NFC built-in under the hood. Since other versions of Android Wear can’t take advantage of that feature, Huawei is apparently flipping the switch on it, allowing Android Pay to work on that device. Currently, the watch is apparently in testing with Google to get approval on that functionality.

While this seems a little too good to be true, it’s also entirely possible and could explain why the company’s update has been delayed for so long while it works out the kinks with the new functionality. Apparently, Android Pay won’t go live with Android Wear 2.0 as soon as it hits and would require Google’s approval which could push that back to Q3 of this year.

By adding support for Android Pay on the original watch, Huawei just took away a big reason why many would go for the updated model instead. Unless you need LTE (spoiler alert, you don’t), the original Huawei Watch just became a lot more compelling… That is, of course, assuming this is true (AusDroid has been fairly reliable in the past, so there’s no immediate reason to dismiss this). We’ve reached out to Huawei for any potential clarification or confirmation on the matter and will update this article when/if they respond.