OnePlus is spinning up the hype machine once more, beginning what will likely be a quite open series of teases for a new smartwatch.
It's been a few years since the impressive OnePlus Watch came out in late 2021, and indeed it's something of a surprise that it hasn't had a successor until now.
Still, the images and taglines that OnePlus has been putting out make it pretty clear that this is what we're looking at, with the dark curve of a watch face highlighted with a slash of red background light.
From "It's about time" to "It's time, to do it right", the slogans aren't exactly the most subtle of puns either, making the watch topic absolutely ironclad.
It's about 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒 pic.twitter.com/SDt2o5FpmsFebruary 19, 2024
The common view is that the new watch, which is highly likely to be called the OnePlus Watch 2, will swap from the RTOS system its predecessor ran on and instead ship with Wear OS 4.
This should make it more integrated than ever into Android systems and standardise its UI and features a little bit.
That's a good thing. Not that the first OnePlus Watch was super clunky, but Wear OS is in a much better place than three years ago, with more app support and better responsiveness and tracking.
The suggestion that this time around OnePlus will "do it right" has fuelled speculation that we'll see a substantial specs bump in this new-gen watch too, which you would expect after three years regardless.
It'll have to go some to be considered among the best smartwatches, but leaks have suggested it'll run on a Qualcomm Snapdragon W5 Gen 1, with a 1.43-inch AMOLED display and a metal chassis that should feel sturdy and well-made.
That Snapdragon chipset is very solid, but also isn't the newest option out there, which suggests that the OnePlus Watch 2 could end up coming in as an affordable or mid-range option rather than something that looks to push the cutting edge.
Either way, another common assumption is that we'll probably hear more about the watch at MWC this year, which is now only a few days away, so it could be that we have a full specs sheet to digest very soon, along with release timings and even pricing.
