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Here's what the highly anticipated OnePlus Watch will be all about

Published: Mar 17, 2021, 3:45 AM

Adrian Diaconescu

Here's what the highly anticipated OnePlus Watch will be all about

With pretty much no important question on the high-end OnePlus 9 handset family left unanswered well ahead of the company's big March 23 event, our attention is moving almost entirely to the brand's highly anticipated and long overdue rookie smartwatch effort.

After spending several years, yes, years in development hell, this has been finally confirmed late last week for an official announcement alongside the aforementioned 5G-enabled smartphones. Curiously enough, the OnePlus Watch is still wrapped in secrecy, although the puzzle pieces are starting to fall into place at last thanks to the generally reliable folks over at pricebaba and hit-and-miss Twitter leaker Ishan Agarwal.

The undoubtedly circular intelligent timepiece is expected to come in a single 46mm case size, which would certainly be an... interesting choice given that the Tizen-powered Samsung Galaxy Watch 3, for instance, is available in 41 and 45mm models, while the industry-leading Apple Watch Series 6 can be purchased with either a compact 40mm or a large 44mm dial.

On the bright side, it sounds like you'll at least be able to choose between black and silver color options of the first-gen OnePlus Watch, both of which will purportedly handle water immersion and dust contact with ease. In addition to keeping an eye on your swimming sessions, the feature-packed wearable device should also be capable of monitoring your heart rate, stress levels, blood oxygen saturation, and sleep quality, as well as automatically detect different types of workouts and physical activities.

You asked for it. You're getting it.
— OnePlus 2 (@oneplus) March 12, 2021

While there are no words on Apple and Samsung-rivaling ECG and fall detection technology, that's already an impressively lengthy list of sensors and health capabilities for what we expect to be a significantly cheaper gadget than the world's best-selling premium smartwatches right now.

Incredibly enough, the OnePlus Watch is also tipped to support the company's proprietary Warp Charge technology and deliver one week (!!!) of battery life after just 20 minutes of charging. That seems unlikely (to say the least), unless OnePlus plans to load up some sort of a tweaked Wear OS platform on this device with an ultra-low-power mode focused entirely on reducing energy consumption by switching off various sensors and "smart" features.

Naturally, you should be able to check out your Android handset and iPhone notifications on your wrist with this bad boy, as well as control music, and yes, even make and receive voice calls without syncing to a mobile device as long as you don't have a problem paying extra for optional standalone LTE connectivity.

Once again, however, we don't know exactly how much the OnePlus Watch is supposed to cost in either a Bluetooth-only or cellular-capable variant, but something tells us we'll find that out before March 23 as well. Stay tuned!