Entrepreneur Lee-Martin Seymour spotted wearing a Huawei

Lee-Martin Seymour, the entrepreneur behind Xref — one of Australia's leading automated reference-checking platforms — was recently photographed wearing a Huawei Watch W1 Active in the all-black stainless steel configuration with matching link bracelet. The sighting is a subtle but telling accessory choice: the W1 Active was Huawei's opening statement in the premium smartwatch market, and its design brief explicitly targeted watch enthusiasts rather than pure gadget consumers.

Launched in 2015 alongside the Huawei Watch W1 Classic, the Active variant distinguished itself through its more sport-forward aesthetic and, in this specific trim, a dark PVD-coated stainless steel case measuring 42mm paired with a black link bracelet and rose-gold applied indices. The dial is a high-contrast black with a carbon-fibre-style centre texture, and the bezel carries a 60-unit tachymeter-style scale — all deliberate nods to traditional watchmaking vocabulary. Under the sapphire crystal sits a 1.4-inch AMOLED display running at 400×400 pixels, driven by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor with 512MB RAM and 4GB of internal storage. A heart-rate sensor, accelerometer, and gyroscope complete the sensor suite, while a 300mAh battery delivers a quoted day-and-a-half of runtime.

From a collector's perspective, the Huawei Watch W1 occupies an interesting footnote in smartwatch history. It arrived at exactly the moment Apple Watch was redefining consumer expectations, and critics widely regarded the W1 as the most credible Android Wear alternative in terms of pure industrial design. The black Active reference remains the most visually coherent variant in the lineup and has consequently held its value slightly better on the secondary market than the leather-strap versions.

For Seymour, the choice tracks logically. As the co-founder of a data-driven HR technology business, wearing a technology-forward timepiece signals fluency with digital infrastructure — but the W1 Active's restrained, watch-first design ensures it doesn't read as a gadget in a boardroom context. The rose-gold detailing against the black dial provides just enough warmth to pair with business casual.

On the secondary market, the Huawei Watch W1 Active 4GB in black steel trades at modest prices reflective of its age and the rapid depreciation curve of first-generation Android Wear hardware. It is primarily a design artefact now, but one that holds genuine historical significance as the moment a Chinese tech giant challenged Swiss aesthetic primacy head-on.