OPPO decided against announcing the expected OPPO Watch on stage at the global launch streamed live from Barcelona last night. Instead, in an interesting decision, along with a press release sent out they launched it on stage at the Chinese event.
We had seen a lot of leaks and teasers already from OPPO so it was no surprise what we did see when it launched but the features it brings to the table we largely unknown until the press release.
As expected, the OPPO Watch is available in both a 41mm and 44mm display size with an AMOLED flexible 3D curved display with a screen to body ratio of over 70% and a pixel resolution of 402 x 476 pixels (326ppi). The bands shown off are available in an Italian calfskin and fluorescent rubber in various colours.
The base of the watch has a ceramic base, all part of the health monitoring features of the smartwatch. Along with the usual heart rate sensors it has sensors to measure pace, steps, location and more and is water resistant to 50m. It can also be used to track your sleep and for the ladies, your menstrual cycles.
Internally the OPPO Watch has two processors, a Snapdragon 2500 for the heavy lifting and an Apollo3 chipset for the less-intensive tasks — a process that helps the battery life last for nearly two days with normal use. While we’d all like more than that OPPO, with their expertise in charging technology have included a new Watch VOOC charging which will charge the watch from 0 to 100 in just 75 minutes. If you are time poor a quick 17 minute charge will result in the battery reaching 50% from just 1%.
On board OPPO have not made the mistake many manufacturers have made before them and have included a decent 8GB of RAM and while there is no SIM slot it does support e-SIM. Inside there is also a built-in GPS module, NFC and Bluetooth 4.2 connectivity.
At this stage it is heading to China first but will make it Downunder with OPPO providing us the following statement:
[OPPO Watch] will come to Australia but much like our smartphones there may be subtle differences in the software and specs to best suit the local market Michael Tran, MD OPPO Australia
Details of the time frame, availability and pricing for the Australian market are currently unknown but we will furnish those as soon as they come to hand. It will be interesting to see just what OPPO do with the UI on the OPPO Watch. If you were looking for a watch that will hopefully be competitive with pricing and still run Android Wear well this could be one worth checking out.
Google assist?
will it work with apple watch bands?…..lol
I don’t like the look of the Snapdragon 2500. It’s an old chip that is seemingly riddled with slowness and other issues
Won’t be slow if it really does have 8GB RAM…
Depends on the “unspecified Android fork” they are running on it. Either way, there’s only so much ram can do to compensate for an underperforming processor.
Will it work with Telstra One Number? That’s what I’m hoping!