The sleek looking OnePlus Watch packs a lot for the price
OnePlus is dipping its toes into lots of tech, and wearables is the latest on the list. We saw the release of a fitness band recently and this was followed today by the OnePlus Watch.
For the uninitiated, the Chinese-based company has numerous phones, amongst other products under its belt. Their range balances high-end quality with low prices and simplistic, user-friendly designs. The outfit has adopted a motto “Never settle”, meaning users should not settle for low-quality devices.
Launched in 2014, the company’s first product was the OnePlus One smartphone. There have been more than a dozen iterations since then, including the most recent OnePlus 8. The outfit also sells the Bullets Wireless earphones and has ventured into the smart TVs market recently with the OnePlus TV.
OnePlus Watch is OnePlus’ first attempt at a smartwatch
The Chinese company falls under the BKK Electronics umbrella. Oppo, Realme and Vivo are also in this club. All of them have recently launched smartwatches and in some cases fitness trackers, too.
Rumors of a smartwatch from OnePlus date back to more than four years ago. However, nothing ever materialized. Granted, there’s no shortage of wearables to choose from, but these do not directly support the OnePlus ecosystem of devices. Many users have been requesting this type of product for a while now.
According to OnePlus CEO Peta Lau, the company has worked with Google on just such a watch. Lau said that they want to create a wearable that works well with its other products, so something with smart integration.
“What we’re trying to do is work with Google to try to improve the connectivity between the Wear OS ecosystem, Android TV, and Android smartphones to create this ability for better device interoperability across the ecosystems,” Lau said a couple of months ago.
Considering this collaboration most people were expecting the device to run on WearOS. But instead we are getting another proprietary RTOS (real-time operating system), along the lines of the one from the likes of Garmin and Huami.
As far as actual specs, the watch comes with a sleek-looking design with 2.5D curved glass. The edges are rounded and the device simply oozes style.
The diameter of the case measures 46mm and there’s a 1.39-inch OLED panel (326 ppi resolution) display on-board. The timepiece uses “premium” material in its build such as 316 steel, according to OnePlus.
The water-resistance rating is 5ATM and IP68 so the device is swim-proof. As far as sensors, there’s built-in GPS, an optical heart rate sensor, blood oxygen monitor and accelerometer. The watch also has 2GB (4GB) of storage memory which you can use to store music from your phone. That’s enough for around 500 songs.
In addition to all the usual fitness tracking goodies and things such as stress tracking, there’s support from 110 types of workouts some of which can be automatically detected. You also get 50+ different watch faces including the ability to upload your photos for customisation purposes, smartphone notifications on your wrist and the ability to use the device as a remote control for your OnePlus TV.
Powering everything is a 402 mAh battery. OnePlus says it is good for a week with normal use and two weeks with limited use. The watch uses quick charging technology – only 20 minutes on the charger is enough to keep it going for a week.
The OnePlus Watch connects to your phone via the OnePlus Health app. At launch, the watch will play nice with Android smartphones with an iOS app coming in the near future.
The timepiece will be available for purchase on April 14th for a surprisingly reasonable $159 for the Classic variant. This one can be purchased in a choice between Midnight Black and Moonlight Silver colours. There’s also a more pricey Cobalt Limited edition which uses cobalt alloy material. The pricing of that one has not been announced yet.
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