Smartwatch shipments are up 40% YoY and although it was a low starting point to get to this 40% it is no surprise that others want in on this burgeoning market. OPPO are the latest to throw their hat in the ring with “confirmation” that they will bring a smartwatch to market next year.
Our favourite source of OPPO leaks and information, OPPO VP Brian Shen, has once again taken to Weibo to lend weight to the circulating rumours that OPPO intend to start making smartwatches. He said in his post that the likelihood of it arriving this year are slim but next year expect it to be launched — and with a square display as you can present more information on a square/rectangle face according to Brian.
He did signal though that this year OPPO are looking to launch behind the neck or neck-mounted noise cancelling (reduction) headphones this year.
At this stage little else is known about the smartwatch including what operating system it will be running. It would not surprise us that given it will be OPPO’s first smartwatch that they lean on Google for help and bring a WearOS watch out. Hopefully they spec it high enough with the new Snapdragon 3100 and at least 1GB of RAM so that it does not suffer from the lag that so many WearOS watches do.
OPPO tend to bring most of their products here in some form so we expect it to arrive here if and when it launches.
Would you buy an OPPO-made smartwatch? Does it need to be running WearOS for you to trust it or would you prefer it didn’t?
With anything OPPO, the question that needs to be asked is updates. I have a R15Pro which was part of the Android 9 beta testing but is yet to see Android 9 with the next version coming soon. Thanks but no thanks.
I have a Samsung watch and the Achilles heel is app support. If Oppo try their own OS there will be very few apps so I wouldn’t buy it.