OnePlus’ return to the smartwatch market came as a bit of a surprise with last week’s announcement of the OnePlus Watch 2. The news represented the Chinese developer’s first steps back into the wearable space since the disastrous launch of the first OnePlus watch three years ago. That device was so poor that OnePlus president and COO Kinder Liu directly addressed it in the blog post announcing the company’s next shot at expanding its family of devices.
But OnePlus’ second go-around gained plenty of promise at Mobile World Congress this week when it provided more details about the forthcoming device. Most notable among what was shared is the OnePlus Watch 2’s dual chipset. The watch features both the Qualcomm Snapdragon W5 and BES 2700 MCU chips with the goal being that each one will perform select tasks for increased optimization and performance. The Qualcomm Snapdragon W5 is positioned to run more intensive tasks while the BES 2700 MCU will pick up the slack with background processes and simpler operations.
It is a novel idea that hasn’t been utilized by the heavy hitters in the smartwatch space and could easily set OnePlus’ offering apart in a world where differentiation is a premium trait. That architecture also lends a helping hand to one of the aspects of the OnePlus Watch 2 known prior to MWC: its purported 100 hour battery life.
The company claimed that the watch will hold its charge for up to 100 hours in smart mode, or OnePlus’ way of saying low-power mode, but further details show that smart mode comes with a few drawbacks, most notably that the option for always-on display is switched off.
OnePlus is also making the switch to Google’s Wear OS 4 and implementing Google Assistant.
Of course, any smartwatch launch must come with a bevy of health and fitness tools and the OnePlus Watch 2 is no exception. The reveal backed up Liu’s statement about the device featuring “meticulous health monitoring” last week, with the Watch 2 featuring an optical eight-channel heart monitoring sensor, a series of tools aimed at providing deep performance insights for runners and tracking for over 100 different sports.
The watch also features dual-frequency GPS, the same GPS tracking tool seen in the Apple Watch Ultra allowing for increased accuracy.
It all stacks up to make the OnePlus Watch 2 sound like the exact right step forward for the company after its folly of a first offering in 2021 and shows that the time between launches was well spent. The real test will be when the device makes its way onto users’ wrists. That wait won’t be long, though. The OnePlus Watch 2 launches on March 4 for $299.99.