OnePlus Watch on track for an early 2021 release, says CEO

During an interview with Input that was published last week, OnePlus co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Pete Lau revealed that the company is working on a smartwatch. He has now tweeted that the wearable, which may or may not be called the OnePlus Watch, will be released early next year.

The Chinese company first started working on a smartwatch back in 2015, the year when the first Apple Watch was released. The idea was put on the back burner when the company found itself overwhelmed with the thermal issues surrounding the OnePlus 2 and the release of the affordable OnePlus X.

In 2019, we saw rumors about the company’s intention to launch the OnePlus Watch alongside the OnePlus 8 in 2020. 

That of course didn’t pan out, and it now appears that the watch will arrive in Q1 2021, probably in March, alongside the OnePlus 9.

It’s almost certain that OnePlus’ smartwatch will have a round form factor. It’s also highly likely that the watch will run Wear OS, given that Lau has confirmed that the company is working with Google to improve interoperability between the Wear OS ecosystem and Android devices. OnePlus’ sister company Oppo’s first flagship smartwatch, which was released not too long ago, also features Wear OS.

A recent believable leak had implied that the wearable won’t run Google’s operating system. After all, Google’s platform has failed to keep up with Apple’s watchOS, which explains why the likes of Samsung and Garmin have developed their own software. 

Although OnePlus doesn’t seem to have given up on Wear OS, it does believe that the standard version of the OS is not good enough for the company and says that it “definitely has room to improve.” 

We don’t know much else about the watch at the moment, except that it will probably be powered by Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon Wear 4100 or 4100 Plus chipset.