The future of luxury is hyper personalisation

I arrived at Huawei’s Experience Centre on Banxuegang Boulevard feeling slightly jaded. I’d seen countless tech showcases before, each one louder and more frenetic than the last. But as I sank into the rear seat of the Maextro S800, something shifted. It wasn’t the plush seat that began to massage my back or the fast wireless charging panel where I could rest my phone, but the fact that without realising it, the car had anticipated my needs and adjusted itself to meet them before I’d even thought to ask. A Huawei staff member tapped the centre screen, and suddenly, the front of the cabin fell into a hush.

It wasn’t just about muting sound. It was about creating an intentional space. My own voice felt clearer, more contained, as though the car were listening. In that moment, I realised I wasn’t visiting a showroom. I had stepped into a thesis on luxury. One that doesn’t arrive in spectacle, but in softness.

Outside the car, the Experience Centre felt more like a curated gallery than a tech hub. Splash screens and guided tours lent it a familiar kind of corporate choreography, but the devices told another story. HarmonyOS 5 already powers a large share of Huawei’s portfolio in China, but HarmonyOS 6, currently in developer preview, reveals where this is all going. Instead of juggling interfaces across your phone, watch, laptop and car, the goal is a seamless flow. HarmonyOS 6 will introduce AI agents, cloud-native continuity and improved cross-device logic, all designed to anticipate you without interrupting you.

This approach was everywhere, though quietly expressed. The Huawei Watch 5 series builds on the company’s deepening investment in health tech. It does the expected things — heart rate, sleep, stress tracking — but adds context over time. The longer you wear it, the better it understands you. This personalisation is practical, not performative. When paired with the right services, it begins to act as a kind of wellness concierge, adjusting recommendations based on your patterns rather than just your stats.

And it’s not just confined to your wrist. The Watch 5 supports Huawei’s Star-flash digital car key system, which works with the Maextro S800. With a flick of the wrist, you can unlock the vehicle, start it and even personalise in-car settings. The Huawei Watch Ultimate, particularly the Sapphire Edition, is positioned slightly differently — built for extreme durability but still deeply integrated into the broader HarmonyOS ecosystem. It supports Nearlink digital keys, NFC car keys and Bluetooth sensorless car key technologies, underscoring how Huawei is designing not for single products, but for connected lives.

That connectivity is a defining principle across Huawei’s ecosystem. A watch doesn’t just sync with a phone. It can trigger your camera remotely or pass data to your laptop or tablet in real time. A phone doesn’t just pair with your laptop — it extends its screen, pulls apps onto the desktop and lets you drag files across with a flick. A tablet becomes a sketchpad, a secondary display or a collaborative interface. Each device retains its own purpose, but they operate as one fluid environment, not isolated endpoints.

The Maextro S800 itself, developed in collaboration with JAC Motors, is the most ambitious example of this ecosystem approach. It’s the first vehicle powered by Huawei’s Galaxy Communications system, and it runs HarmonyOS from the inside out. The interface is elegant, restrained and responsive. The materials — soft leather, brushed metal, polished veneers — feel more Rolls-Royce than mainstream. And yet, the intelligence embedded throughout the cabin never overwhelms the experience. It reacts gently to your presence, offering up controls when you need them, and disappearing when you don’t.

It was the same with the Pura 80 Ultra. Though not yet available in SA, it left a strong impression. Its camera system intuitively adjusted angles and settings on the fly. There’s no need to toggle through menus. Just lift, frame and shoot. The phone adapts to you in the background. Likewise, the Mate XT, Huawei’s tri-fold smartphone, sounds outlandish on paper, but felt surprisingly normal in the hand. It folded and unfolded like it had always done so, wrapping itself around the contours of how I work, not the other way around.

And that’s the point. None of these products felt like declarations. They feel like responses; not to hype but to habits. To the rhythms of real people moving through real days.

True innovation, it turns out, is not just about what your technology can do. It’s about how little it asks of you in order to do it. It’s the difference between presence and pressure; between being seen and being understood.

The future of luxury, then, may not be defined by size or speed, but by sensitivity. A system that knows you well enough to disappear until it’s needed. One that doesn’t intrude. It adapts, then waits.

That, to me, is the most luxurious thing of all.