A couple of months ago, OnePlus teased its attempt at doing a smartwatch back when it was still a fairly new entity in the smartphone market. While the post hinted at a new OnePlus Watch from the company, those claims were soon dismissed. However, in a fresh report, the company’s CEO has now clarified that it is still working on its smartwatch. Moreover, the company is also working on the Wear OS platform with Google, a point that is completely unrelated to the smartwatch.
The CEO Pete Lau confirmed the above two developments to The Input in an interview, hinting that a OnePlus Watch could be on the cards for a possible launch in 2021. Lau shared no release date or specifications on the Watch, which again hints towards a launch that’s not happening anytime soon. After all, OnePlus starts teasing and revealing information about its new products from almost a month before the actual launch.
OnePlus Watch with Wear OS?
Before your mind races to places, you should know that Lau has made it absolutely clear that the OnePlus Watch and Wear OS projects are completely unrelated. The company wants the watch to be a part of its IoT ecosystem in a way that it communicates seamlessly with the TV, phone and other smart devices. For that, the company is working with Google to make deep system-level integration possible.
The original teaser post on the OnePlus Watch.
“Wear OS definitely has room to improve,” Lau said. “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. This has been something looked at very positively from Google’s side as well, so this is the direction that we’re trying to develop, but we don’t have more than we can share on that right now.”
Lau isn’t confirming Google’s platform although he isn’t denying a possibility. After all, why would a company work on a smartwatch platform and then not use it in one of its products? OnePlus has long relied on Google’s software products and has worked with it to improve the experience. A case in point is its smartphones and smart TVs.
OnePlus’ parent company Oppo came up with a Wear OS-powered smartwatch earlier this year, called the Oppo Watch. The Oppo Watch uses the Wear OS platform but infuses some of Oppo’s ColorOS elements into the mix to make the experience different. It is possible that OnePlus could do the same, given that it borrows highly from Oppo products. The OnePlus Watch could eventually run on the same Wear OS platform but may bring some Oxygen OS elements as well.
All we can do now is wait for OnePlus to give out an official announcement regarding the OnePlus Watch. Its cousin firm, Realme, is coming up with two smartwatches in India this week at varied price points, called the Realme Watch S and Realme Watch S Pro.
