The OnePlus Watch made its debut alongside the OnePlus 9 Series in it’s launch event on March 23. It packs a 1.39-inch AMOLED screen, 4GB of storage, and an upwards of two weeks of battery life on a single charge. Here’s a breakdown of all the information for Kenyan users and why it’s not only a serious contender but a force to reckon with in the smartwatch industry inKenya.
As a tech enthusiast, I’ve tried plenty of different smartwatches over the years and so has the rest of my colleagues. Based on our experiences, we’ve had in-depth discussions on what a great user experience means for different devices.
The one thing we unanimously seemed to agree upon is that having to charge our smartwatch daily really affected our experience. If we forgot to charge it overnight, a few minutes of charging before we head out just isn’t enough and the battery dies later in the day. After extensive user research, we received further validation that battery life could make or break the user’s experience with their smartwatch.
In this case, OnePlus decided to create a product that can easily support daily usage, with all the necessary functions to track and monitor your activities. OnePlus also wanted to ensure that if you forget to charge your device, it should be able to quickly charge up in a short period of time. That’s why the OnePlus Watch comes with a powerful battery that lasts up to 14 days with Warp Charge to give you a boost – 5 minutes of charge to last you a day or 20 minutes to last a week.
But battery life is only one part of product experience. OnePlus has been at the forefront of display smoothness since the OnePlus 7 Pro.
ANSWERING THE PEOPLE
Recently, during a public QnA, a number of issues were raised by users and answered by the team concerning the OnePlus watch. Here’s a collection of many of the frequent ones, and their answers:
Q What is the processor used on the OnePlus Watch?
A The OnePlus Watch uses a three-chip combination solution – ST32 + Apollo 3 + Cypress. The ST chip has strong performance and is responsible for the interactive interface of the UI. The display is also processed by the ST chip, giving users a smooth system experience.
The Apollo 3 chip is a low power consumption chip. As a platform for various sensors, it supports the OnePlus Watch to stay online for extended periods of time, which is convenient for users to record activity and health data for a long time.
Cypress is a professional communication chip that supports the Bluetooth call and Bluetooth music functions of the watch.
The three-chip combination solution, with each chip playing its own role, helps maximize system efficiency, reduce power consumption and finally achieve the co-existence of a long battery life and high frame display.
Q Does the OnePlus Watch have a call feature and in-built speakers?
A Yes, the OnePlus Watch supports call features and has a built-in mic and speaker to answer and make calls. It also relies on the vibration
Q Can we reply to notifications from the OnePlus Watch?
A We have a pre-set list to reply to messages conveniently. After an upcoming OTA, we will also have a customized pre-set reply list to let you tailor your own instant replies.
Q Is this watch compatible with all other older OnePlus phones In the Kenyan Market?
A The watch is compatible with Android phones running on Android 6.0 Marshmallow and above. It does not currently pair with iPhone.
Q Does it have internal storage?
A The OnePlus Watch supports internal storage of 4GB in total. It offers around 2GB of storage for music alone and can store up to 500 songs.
Q Which companion app is there for data monitoring?
A The OnePlus Watch uses the OnePlus Health app to monitor and store health data. Also, the data can be synced with Google Fit.
Q Is it going to have sleep monitoring with sleep stages? How about a health app, with calorie monitoring and all-day step and calorie burn counters?
A Yes, sleep monitoring includes monitoring various stages of sleep as well as sleep blood oxygen monitoring. The OnePlus Health app tracks calories, steps and sleep data all in one place.
Q What is the thickness of the OnePlus watch?
A It has a unibody design that is only 10.9mm thick.
Q What size lugs do you need for non-stock straps?
A For third party straps, the standard 22mm size works.
Q Do the 500 songs have to be downloaded to your phone to sync to the watch?
A Yes, the music needs to be download in MP3/LA-AAC format file to sync to the watch. For other music platforms which cannot download the music, the watch can be used to remotely control the phone when listening to music, to move to the next song, or adjust the volume.
Q Will it be possible to sync my gallery photos and see my photos on my watch screen?
A You can’t sync all the photos to the watch and browse there. But you can choose photos for your watch dial display picture from the OnePlus Health app.
Q Does it support always-on display?
A We’ve heard many users request the always-on display. We are currently looking at things like how it impacts power consumption and are evaluating the possibility to bring this feature in a future OTA. I’m also interested to know your thoughts about how important AOD is to you, considering that it could increase power consumption by almost 50%. Let us know in the thread below.
Q Can you offer a watch face showing the weather forecast, altitude, sunset time, and second time zone display?
A These are all really cool ideas, and we can take this into consideration as we continue designing even more watch face options.
Q Does the watch have built-in GPS for tracking cycling or running? Can it track data without the smartphone and sync later when it connects with your phone? And will the GPS work in Kenya and Africa in general?
A Yes, the watch has built-in GPS that can work without the smartphone to record the workout route. The workout data also can be recorded by the watch and later synced with the smartphone. The GPS will definitely work in all areas in Kenya and Africa
Q How many hours of battery will I get when I am using GPS?
A It supports 25 hours of battery life when continuously using GPS.
Q Will there be a continuous heart rate monitoring option or does it only measure HR variability?
A We have always-on and interval heart rate monitoring. You can turn on the continuous monitoring in the OnePlus Health app to monitor your heart rate every second.
Q Why can I not find the OnePlus Health app on Google Play in Kenya?
A It will become available on Google Play shortly before the watch goes on sale, so keep an eye out soon.
Q Will it connect with any Bluetooth headphones or only with OnePlus headphones?
A The watch can connect with any headphones that support Bluetooth 4.0 and above.
Q How is the display activated?
A The display can be activated both by pushing the side button and also by raising your hand to wake up the screen.
With the help of the display team, OnePlus imported the high-frame display debugging experience into the OnePlus Watch, working on optimizing the bottom layer of the display architecture, improving the fluency of more than 50 scenes, and changing the display frame rate from the industry’s usual 30 fps to more than 50 fps.
In fact, the frame rate of some scenes even doubled. It is no exaggeration to say that this is probably one of the smoothest smartwatches with long battery life available in the market today.
As confirmed by OnePlus CEO, Pete Lau, on Twitter, the OnePlus Watch supports over 110 work-out modes.
SPECS
