It’s not every day that a new player enters the smartwatch game, and that’s why I was intrigued OnePlus’CEO Carl Pei announced last summer so that a portable can be en route. Rumors have been mounting for the past few weeks, and now we know what the clock will do looks like. After months of curiosity, I was … overwhelmed.
Before the upcoming March 23rd of OnePlus, @UnboxTherapy which is a leak of the oh-so-smart-named OnePlus Watch. After examining the image for about two minutes, I can confirm to everyone that it looks like every other non-Apple smartwatch. There are two buttons on the right, black straps and a black case, and a watch that looks pretty standard. Woo. It’s a bit boring, i expected a little better from OnePlus.
Smartwatch Ishan Agarwal also dropped a few more deets on his Twitter and noticed that the watch would be 46mm (a big boy!). It also has IP68 water resistance, 4 GB storage and the ability to control music and OnePlus TV. In terms of health features, which have become a major selling point for smartwatches, OnePlus will apparently offer automatic to track workouts, including swimming workouts, and also monitor sleep, stress, blood oxygen saturation and heart rate. No word on battery life, but Agarwal it will support Warp Charge, or the ability to charge within 20 minutes a week. This implies that you wear at least a week’s wear from this thing, which would be great, but who knows.
The interesting part of these rumors is that the OnePlus Watch will not run Wear OS, although it is an Android watch. There have been many rumors about this leading up to the March 23 event, and according to the Edge, The CEO, Pete Lau, confirms in a forum that this will be the case. Instead, the company has selected for an RTOS (real-time operating system) type OS. No word on what this means for a third-party ecosystem or digital assistant. Why OnePlus is not going for Wear OS, Lau says the company wants to provide a smooth, reliable experience, coupled with great battery life. Wear OS has made improvements over the past year, but battery life is still a sore point for that platform.
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This is all well and good, but this is not what anyone would describe as terribly exciting. It would be one thing if OnePlus came out the door with a unique design, or would decide to place its own carrier on Wear OS like the Oppo Watch did. But OnePlus seems to have played it safe – aprobably too safe. Unless we see something absurd like the 30-day battery life, unique software or a breakthrough health feature (for which we do not hold our breath), it seems like it’s smartwatch just for the die-hard OnePlus fans.