DA09/V89. Smartwatch, 7.75mm thin, ø43.1mm, 1.43″ disp. Review.

Posted on by EskeRahn

Another quite thin smartwatch has popped up, here crops from Advertising renderings

Compared to the classic T8, it is a bit thicker, but with a 21% larger display in the (within 0.23%) same diameter body.
On the other hand it if slightly thinner and much lesser bezels than the T8 Pro, that it is a direct competitor too.
Ignoring the protrusion of the T8 models, they are thinner though. The Da09 got no protrusion, but a flat back and slightly slanted/rounded edges

2024-10-10 Last update was AOD ON, only last slightly over 1 day!!! And charge 1½h.

Here initial info from links and own measurements..

Key specs

  • 1.43″ AMOLED display, ø466pixel
  • 7.75mm thin (2% thinner han advertised!)
  • 43.1mm wide
  • 48.8mm long
  • 28.47g ex band.
  • Just  3.4mm bezels -> 71% screen coverage
  • Same crappy DaFit app as many other Chinese watches
  • Rotary crown/button
  • Looks much like a real watch :mrgreen:
  • Three case colours offered Steel/Gold/Black
  • 200mAh battery
  • 20mm standard pin band
  • Main chip JL7013A6
  • G-sensor: Minghao DA267
  • Heart rate sensor:LC09A

And they got this function list that I’m yet to see if is real

THERMOMETER, Alarm Clock, Remote Control, Countdown, Sleep Tracker, Speed Measurement, Fitness Tracker, Passometer, Call Reminder, Answer Call, Push Message, Message Reminder, Dial Call, Altitude Meter, Heart Rate Tracker, Gesture control, Activity Tracker, Calorie Tracker, Breath Monitor, Video Call, AI voice assistant, WORLD TIME

I stroke those out, I can not find supported.

In many ways it seems to be like a fusion of a MT55, a DW01 and a T8. Or a T8 Pro with a 17% larger screen/less bezels.
Using variants of the same software, and on the variant of the same JL7013 cpu. The sensors are not identical though, but would not claim to be able to pinpoint what is 100% identical.

It got quite thin bezels of 3.4mm, and that is about what we usually has under the glass. This is in total including the just 0.55mm thin frame! Under the 42mm glass disk it is just 2.8mm.
Here the bezels and coverage ratios compared to the other thin ones.

DA09 T8classic T82024/T8Pro T8mini DW01 MT55/MT56 TN88
Screen coverage 71% 59% 61% 57% 65% 62% 61%
Bezels 3.4mm 5.0mm 4.7mm 4.9mm 4.0mm 4.9mm 5.1mm
Display diameter 1.43″ 1.3mm 1.32″ 1.19″ 1.32″ 1.43″ 1.43″
Case diameter 43.1mm 43mm 43mm 40mm 41.6mm 46.2mm 46.5mm

Like the MT55/56 it got a large flat back, and not the nice conic back shape like the T8 family and DW01, so looks a tiny bit thicker mounted on the arm.

Here I tried to sketch the profiles, the DA09 is a soft curve at the outer edge, not straight lines, like I used here


T8Classic blue, T8Pro red, DA09 orange, T8mini yellow

I have struggled to get an image visualising the profile, quite tough on such a shiny surface to get light and shadow right not in a studio environment. This is the least bad I managed for now:


Note the ring going in, I think it is just an ornament, but could be the case pressed in grabbing the display glass disc?

Here another macro (click to enlarge) of the sensor/LEDs

 

Here an advertise-rendering:

This far I’ve seen both V89 and DA09 as the name, but has not been able to find FCC info or similar. It seems to be released late August but not sure on that either.
Could well be that one/both are just names given by wholesaler.

I currently only got these links:

One of these mentions “Sapphire Crystal” I doubt very much if that is real though, but would be awesome if it is correct.

In one of the above links we got a short (strange oriented) video:

Here a few video-crops:

 

The ones I got, does not have the temperature sensor, but looks otherwise identical, (beside the golden “DA09” i also got a black “V89.” yes the dot is part of the name).
Here the DA09 compared with the T8 Pro, that has an ever so slightly less diameter (0.23% or 0.1mm)

(And yes I forgot to remove the blue protective foil from the crown. of the DA09…)
Note how the arms are pointing nicely downwards on both, making it better suited for lesser arms.

 

On the images can be spotted a mic hole on the opposite side to the crown, as well as one on the back. And in the video-crops the slightly protruding small plate I assume is the temperature sensor (that mine does not have). It seems to have two openings for LEDs and one for the sensor.

Also note the band attachments. Though in principle arms like for the T8 and DW01, they are designed more like a classic watch as an integrated part of the case, and not something ‘attached’ – obviously a purely aesthetic (for me pleasing) detail, though they in theory could be fractionally stronger.

Note the rather unusual slightly concave space between the band and the case (here cropped from their rendering)

I believe the speaker is hidden down there

 

Rotary crown

The idea of a rotary crown is nice, as we are so used to it from classic watches. But I’m not a fan on how they use it. especially that it in standard show watch face mode switches watch face. To me that functionality seems more a nuisance than a feature. Especially as you can only upload one, and the pre installed – let me be kind and word it as – I’m unlikely to deliberately enable… But of course that is firmware, and there MIGHT come an option to disable the nuisance.

The watch does NOT have a switch for rotating the image 180 degrees, so th rotary crown is almost useless for those that prefer to wear the watch on the right. Obviously the push functionality works fine, but it is really awkward to turn.

They really do not use it for much, where it make sense!!! Generally just a duplicate of swipe up/down, !!! It would be OBVIOUS when opening custom timer to scroll, and use the speed you turn to determine how fast it should increment/decrement, but it does nothing at all there…. It could also be useful for setting date and time, but they do not even offer that, must be done using the shitty app.  ;(

 

Watch faces

Like so many of the other cheap Chinese smartwatches being pestered by the bad DaFit app, it only allows you to upload a single watch face to the watch. And though there are a few funny one, there are none decent ones, and few even tolerable. Most are just ugly and not intended for grown ups. 🙁

It should be really simple: You got a watch with pitch black bezels. So a base face should be black or fade into black towards the edge. And I do NOT want a very dominant ring of minute markers, emphasizing that the watch face does not reach the outer edge of the glass…. Minute or five minute markers are nice, but should be kept subdued though still clearly visible. On the other hand I DO want the minutes hand to use the full circle, or at the least almost, If I wanted a face with shorter hands, I would have bought a lesser watch….

 

Firmware/name.

I have bought two, from different vendors, And I’m a little surprised about the name of the firmware versions

  • MOY-JLV3-2.0.0 for the golden “DA09”
  • MOY-7C83-2.0.0 for the black “V89.” (yes with a dot)

There is also an id that is identical on the two: H05C02399C99 so this could be the real name….

I have not been able to find any difference between the features or hardware of the two, neither got the temperature sensor, so I have no idea if there are any differences, nor do I know if there are a third number for a variant with the temperature sensor, or something on a prototype later abandoned?

The name is also presented in the DaFit app when connected

 

Battery and Stamina.

After 14.06 days it reached 10% and stopped monitoring. After 14.6 it reached 0%. So two weeks, Note that it plummets when close to the end as several of the others with related chip and software does, (not a linear curve).

It is the warm-yellow (rgb FFD320) curve here ending close to 14 days: (click to enlarge)

Notice the text “5V=1A” on the back to the right here (click to enlarge)

I really doubt that could be correct! Otherwise 5W would mean super fast charge of an ~0.75Wh battery. (But it could be a rating of a short peak current drawn just when connected??)
When charging starting anywhere from depleted to around 50% it charges with 0.15A, and decreased nicely closing full charge. (I’m not sure exactly when it reduces the current, but I think around 70-80%’). The total charging time, from the point it turned it self off at to 99% was 90 minutes, and it kept charging with a very low current (<0.01A) towards 100% for some time, not sure how long, but the current was zero a quarter later.
ADD 2024-10-21: At the next charge I noticed it had reached 74% after 70 minutes, and the current were reduced slightly to 0.137A, and continued to decline slowly, 0.126A at 80%.

I tried with AOD turned ON, and that wears the battery really quickly. After 24h it is already down at 23%!!
There are no way to set an ON/OFF window, nor does it go into temporary OFF when not moving like the original T8 offered…. So for real life usage this would require manually turning off during sleep, or daily charging – making the mode pretty useless, except perhaps temporarily for social occasions to look less odd than a black disc for say a dinner or party.

 

Accuracy

I certainly do not expect any high accuracy from these cheap Chinese watches. But it seems to do a better job on the Heart rate than many of the other new ones. I think it is about as accurate as the original T8.

To help discharge it quickly, I tried claiming to do some training bike exercise, and here it read the HR every 10 second.
The shitty app allows no zooming, so here both a long and short period, so details can be viewed

 

It seems to do a fair job on counting steps. I do NOT see a lot of fake counts from the arm movements while sitting at a computer.

On the sleep, well like the others it struggles to distinguish between sitting quite in the evening/night (seeing it as light sleep), and actually haven gone to bed and fallen to sleep. (I have not yet fallen to sleep in a chair while this was on). It detects correctly when I wake up though. I doubt it detects the sleep phases right, a lot of deep sleep, even long into the sleep cyklus, and only little REM.

BP claimed ‘measurements’ are (as so many others) just rubbish! The result on the arm or of a wooden table(!) is about the same!!!

SPO2 could be correct, but hard to say – again the wooden table gives 98%, on the arm I get 98-99%. But holding my breath for 40s first do make it drop to 96%, so that could well be correct.

Stress: Well my table is quite stressed 71, where my arm gives 30, so at the least it can see a difference, and being quite relaxed it seems reasonable…

 

Early conclusion.

Like a T8 Pro, 0.3mm thinner and with a 17% larger display squeezed in a body only 0.23% wider), and added functionality (rotary crown though used much).
I will be back with more in the coming days, and are likely to adjust stuff as I find it..

I have a feeling that the HR is less inaccurate than the DW01 and new T8 trio. Seems about as ‘accurate’ as the classic T8, but have not done any accurate reference compares.

Though I liked the T8original a lot, and thus have a positive attitude towards Sovogue, I would say you should look hard for arguments in favour of the T8pro (or harder for T82024) over the DA09. The DA09 is ever so slightly larger en the arm, but the larger screen and what for now looks like better accuracy outweighs this fully.