Making phone calls from your wrist. It is something that was dreamed of just 20 years ago. Now, with the GT08 MTK6261, and many others, it is possible to do that. Can the GT08 MTK6261 compete with other smartwatches? Let’s have a look and find out!

Introduction & Specifications

Looking at the specifications of the GT08 MTK6261, I’m not really impressed. The most surprising thing is the network compatibility, but that is needed to make phone calls of course. Besides that, it does not look like your typical smartwatch or smart tracker, like the Xiaomi Redmi Band or the BlitzWolf BW-HL2. I’m starting to wonder if there is a market for this watch, but let’s have a look at the performance and usability first!

Specifications
Model:	GT08
Band Material:	TPU
CPU:	MTK6261
Network:	GSM850/900/1800/1900MHZ
SIM Card:	Micro SIM Card
Battery:	Up to 7 days
Battery Capacity:	350mAh
Screen Size:	1.54"
Front Camera:	0.3MP
Bluetooth:	V3.0
RAM+ROM:	128MB RAM + 64MB ROM, TF Card up to 32 GB (not included)
Resolution:	240x240
Package:	1x GT08 Smart Watch, 1x USB Cable, 1x User Manual

Unboxing

The GT08 MTK6261 comes in an unrecognizable box. It has smart icons, like a camera, Google Play Store, phone, and WiFi symbols all over it. There is no brand name, specifications, or features on the box at all.

Inside the box, we find the GT08 MTK6261. Underneath the watch, we find the battery, charging cable, and a short manual. I rarely see a device where you can take out the battery and replace it yourself, so that is a good thing, I guess.

Hardware & Design

The GT08 MTK6261 itself is pretty big and bulky. We see a recent trend in smartphones where there is no bezel anymore. Well, on the GT08 MTK6261 we have a big bezel all around. The speaker and microphone are well-positioned and are clear of obstruction. The charging port is covered by a lid and the “rotation” button, which is not rotatable, clicks easily.

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The battery, which you get in the box and not in the watch, is small and easily placed. When opening the back cover, we see the SIM slot as well. If you want to use the GT08 MTK6261 to make calls, this is where your SIM card should go. (Get this one only if you want to make calls!)

How To Operate?

I’m still struggling with this watch if I need to control it. I just don’t get the way it is supposed to work. If I make it to the apps, I can navigate just fine as it is a touch screen, but besides that, I get a random screen where I can make a phone call when I unlock it first before seeing the watch faces, which confuses me. After that screen, I get the watch face, but without it being selected, it changes itself when clicking on it instead of jumping to the applications of the GT08 MTK6261.

Once you are on the applications screen, it works with swiping. Just a simple press means you selected it and that works pretty well on such a small screen. I thought I would select different apps or click next to the wanted application very often, but that is not the case. I guess that is one of the few things done right with the GT08 MTK6261.

Battery Life

On a single charge, you can use the GT08 MTK6261 for around 3 to 4 days in BlueTooth mode. If you use the GT08 MTK6261 with a SIM card, this will be dropped to around 2 days maximum. Depending on how many calls you make with the GT08 MTK6261.

Charging goes easily with a Micro-USB port and takes around 2 hours to be fully charged.

Software

Well, I can not find an application that you can download to configure or play with the GT08 MTK6261. You can make a connection with BlueTooth, but that is it. I can not share my contacts and it won’t show the time that is set on my smartphone. I tried to update it or see if I can connect it in another way, but it is not working for me. So far, this is a very disappointing product.

How To Connect?

First, you have to make sure what the name of the GT08 MTK6261 is. You can do this by going to the BlueTooth icon and click on “My Name”. This is the name you need to connect with on your smartphone. You can change it or keep it as is. Now, just make sure the visibility is turned on, so it is discoverable for your smartphone. Go to the BlueTooth settings of your smartphone and look for the name you just saw, in my case “GT08”.

Once the connection is made, it should ask you permission to share the contact details and call logs, but that never happened for me and I can not trigger it to do so.

Watch Faces

On the GT08 MTK6261, there are three default watch faces. When you picked one, unlocks the GT08 MTK6261, and swipe on the watch face, it changes. It is impossible (at least for me) to lock that watch face. The three that are available are not bad, it just shows the time in a different dial. There is no step counter, heart rate (due to the missing heart rate sensor), or any other health-related information. Very basic and overall just poor.

These are the three watch faces available:

Notifications

Since I’m unable to connect it properly, due to a missing app or the needed permissions, I can not send notifications to my watch. Receiving a WhatsApp message, an incoming call, or any other notification is not shown on the GT08 MTK6261. I really have no idea how to get this working or how to configure it properly. I can say for myself that I’m pretty handy with figuring it out, but with the GT08 MTK6261, it is just not working for me.

Features

Some basic features of a smartwatch are missing here. Maybe my expectations are wrong and this is a totally different niche watch, but sleep tracking and heart rate monitoring are pretty much the standard nowadays. The GT08 MTK6261 does not have a heart rate sensor, which makes the activity tracking inaccurate. It can not calculate the calories properly. Sleep is monitored, but you have to manually start and stop it, which makes no sense to me. All my other smartwatch or smart trackers did it automatically, and that is the way it supposes to work. Let’s have a look at the features the GT08 MTK6261 has to offer.

Calling

Unfortunately, I could not test the calling capabilities of the GT08 MTK6261. It takes a Micro-SIM, and I only have Nano SIM’s. Besides that, I wanted to test the speaker, but since I can not connect it to my phone properly and there is no SD card slot, I can not play any music. This “smart” watch keeps disappointing me…

Activities

You can start an activity from the watch, but you are not able to select Walking, Running, or Cycling for example. It is just one activity that you can start and that’s it! The GT08 MTK6261 must be handled more like a smartphone around your wrist than a smartwatch, as it is not that smart after all. Just one activity is not enough and it can not calculate the calories properly due to a missing heart rate sensor.

Sleep Tracking

Starting and ending your sleep monitoring by hand is outdated, to be honest. This can be done automatically, as seen in all other smartwatches, like the BlitzWolf BW-HL2, Xiaomi Redmi Band, and the Fobase Watch 6 for example. All of them start and stop the sleep monitoring automatically when they detect movement, but at the GT08 MTK6261 you have to do it manually, which is a hassle and not accurate at all.

Camera

There is a 0.3MP camera available on the GT08 MTK6261. You can take pictures with your smartwatch! How cool! The quality of the photos is terrible. Unfortunately, I can not find the SD card slot so I can not save any photo taken with the GT08 MTK6261, but the quality on the little screen is so bad. If you had the idea of buying this to leave your smartphone at home and take photos from your wrist, don’t. If you want to sneaky take pictures of new and unreleased products, this might be interesting!

Others

Since this is basically a smartphone, just around your wrist, there are many other features. You have a fully working calendar, file manager, photos, camera, and other apps like Facebook or Twitter available. Unfortunately, I can not figure out where to put the SD card to actually take photos using the GT08 MTK6261 or install applications like WhatsApp or Facebook, but it should be available.

the features that are on there, like the Pedometer or Sleep Monitoring, are just rubbish and are not working at all. For example, the activity tracker tracked a walk I did of 35 minutes to 1700 steps, where my Garmin Instinct tracked it tp over 4000 steps (with GPS). Who to believe? I’ll go with the Garmin Instinct!

Conclusions

Where to start? Is there a market for this watch/smartphone? It is impossible to compare the GT08 MTK6261 to other recently released smartwatches, like the BlitzWolf BW-HL2 or the Xiaomi Redmi Band.

The design is big and bulky, the controls don’t work that great unless you are in the app layout, I can not find the SD card slot, the camera is crappy. Well, I think it is clear that I do not recommend this smartwatch at all. I literally can not think of 3 use cases where this smartwatch would be picked over others. If you know some, please let me know and I can reconsider this review. For now, stay away from the GT08 MTK6261. You will be disappointed.