There has been talk of a OnePlus watch For years now, and in just a few days, OnePlus is expected to finally present it and take on the Apple Watch. The company dipped its fingers into wearable devices for the first time earlier this year with the OnePlus Band, but given its limited features and exclusivity in India, it’s not exactly the smart wearable that people have been waiting for. With OnePlus Watch, that is going to change.
As OnePlus prepares to enter the smartwatch market, it has a lot of work ahead of it. Apple continues to dominate with its unstoppable Apple Watch, with competitors from Fitbit, Samsung and others failing to capture the same mass appeal and success that Apple has seen. Counterpoint investigation reported in August 2020 that Apple was responsible for more than half of the global smartwatch market in 2020, followed by Fossil and Garmin, which account for 11.8% and 9.4% of the market, respectively.
Following confirmation from OnePlus CEO Pete Lau, a OnePlus smartwatch will take place in early 2021, and with OnePlus holding a press event on March 8 to present its latest products, all eyes are now on. the company to see what you can do to make your smart wearable device stand firm. out of. Dethroning the Apple Watch as the leading smartwatch is probably too high an order for the first time OnePlus launches, but by making sure the OnePlus Watch does a few key things, it may at least have a chance to make some kind of a dent in it. market. .
An elegant and accessible design
When the first Apple Watch launched in 2015, it was initially mocked for its design. It didn’t look like any regular watch that anyone had ever seen, but rather fully embraced the fact that it was a sleek, minimalist piece of technology. It’s a design that Apple has stuck with six years later, and compared to other smartwatches that often try to mimic traditional wristwatches with bulkier cases and different dials, it’s more appealing to a larger group of people. Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 3 is one of the most capable smartwatches available in 2021, but thanks to its huge case and overly masculine aesthetic, it’s not something that many people can comfortably wear.
With the OnePlus Watch, OnePlus would be smart to take a page out of Apple’s playbook and provide users with an equally minimal and accessible design. Keep it as thin and light as possible, don’t add any distinctly masculine or feminine aesthetic flair, and create something that looks like it belongs on the wearer’s wrist, whether you’re at the gym or out to dinner. It’s not a particularly easy goal to achieve, but it’s one that OnePlus should strive for. Even if the company goes the Oppo Watch route and draws heavily from Apple Watch design, that will be better than much of the hardware on other Android smartwatches.
Powerful physical activity tracking
In recent years, Apple has made health tracking one of the main focuses of the Apple Watch. It continued to expand the Fitness app, launched Fitness + for users who want to take their exercise to the next level, and added blood oxygen detection on the latest Apple Watch Series 6. The Apple Watch certainly has a lot more to offer. health / fitness characteristics, but it has become incredibly apparent that this is an area in which Apple is continually growing.
If OnePlus wants the OnePlus Watch to be seen as a serious competitor to the Apple Watch, it needs to make fitness tracking a standout feature of it. And, given the company’s previous OnePlus Band mentioned above, it certainly seems like this is an area OnePlus knows it has to address. For some contexts, the OnePlus Band offered 13 modes for exercise tracking, sleep tracking, heart rate monitoring, and an SpO2 sensor. If OnePlus was able to cram all of that into a small band, one can only assume that all of that tech will make its way to the OnePlus Watch as well.
However, there are more than extensive sensors and robust exercise tracking modes. Like the Apple Watch and its Fitness companion app on the iPhone, the OnePlus Watch has to do meaningful things with this data, whether it’s showing user trends in their daily activity, allowing them to compete in challenges with friends, or anything else to make health features feel as robust and complete as possible.
Reliable connectivity
The OnePlus Watch is expected to ship with Google’s Wear OS operating system. It’s the same software that powers devices like the Fossil Gen 5 and Skagen Falster 3, and while there are many things Wear OS does well, a persistent problem the platform has had for years is one that could be the death of the OnePlus Watch: inconsistent. Connectivity
With those Wear OS watches mentioned above and many others, it is not uncommon to run into a host of connectivity issues. Whether it’s delayed notifications, randomly disconnected Bluetooth, or Wear OS refusing to see the phone you’re trying to connect to during the setup process, these are all things that ultimately drive people off the platform and make them lose faith in it. . Compared to the Apple Watch, which is as reliable as smartwatches, OnePlus has to find some way to address this. Fortunately, OnePlus has confirmed that it is working on exactly that. In an interview with Input Late last year, Lau said:
Wear OS definitely has room for improvement. What we’re trying to do is work with Google to try to improve connectivity between the Wear OS ecosystem, Android TV, and Android smartphones to create this capability for better device interoperability across ecosystems.
Assuming these enhancements are ready to go when the OnePlus Watch launches, that could be absolutely huge. Reliable connectivity may not be one of the most exciting things to talk about, but it is absolutely essential in everyday use. Here OnePlus has a chance to succeed where other Wear OS watches have failed.
Competitive price
Last but not least is the price factor. OnePlus used to be known for creating some of the best-value Android phones out there, but with its latest releases, the company has increasingly moved towards the flagship-level price seen in all the other big names in the mobile space. . . For the OnePlus Watch to attract the widest possible audience, competitive prices are a must.
It’s hard to speculate on the exact price of the OnePlus Watch given how little is still known about it, but if OnePlus hopes to make the OnePlus Watch an attractive alternative to the Apple Watch, it’s obvious what needs to be done. The $ 279 Apple Watch SE is one of the best smartwatch values available in 2021, and if OnePlus can undermine it, it has a winner on its hands. $ 250 would be a more than reasonable number to aim for, but if the OnePlus Watch can come as low as $ 200, it will be set for success.
Source: Counterpoint investigation, Input
Reference-screenrant.com
