The Oppo Watch, a new Apple Watch lookalike from the Chinese tech company, was unveiled alongside the Oppo Find X2 series in March, and at the time the company stated it would be coming to Europe in the future.
Many months have passed since then, though, and we've heard nothing else on the fate of the smartwatch - is it still coming to Europe? What about other countries? How much will it cost there, and will anything be different from the launched version, which was only available in China? We don't know right now.
If the Oppo Watch has even a fraction of the intriguing design, clean software and other cool features of Oppo phones, though, it's definitely a smartwatch to get excited for, especially given its Chinese price suggests it will be affordable.
To give you a better idea of what the Oppo Watch is like we've collected everything we know about it including its specs, when it could come out and how much it could cost.
Cut to the chase
- What is it? An affordable smartwatch from Oppo
- When is it out? Possibly August 2020
- How much will it cost? Around $215 / £165 / AU$325
Oppo Watch price and release date
The Oppo Watch was unveiled on March 6 alongside the Oppo Find X2 and Find X2 Pro at an event hosted by the company in place its show at Mobile World Congress, which was cancelled in 2020.
From March 6 the Oppo Watch was available in China. Pretty early on Brian Shen, then Oppo's VP, confirmed it was coming to Europe too. Oppo backed this up later in the month with some tweets detailing the smartwatch some more, and it was released in Germany in July, so it seems a release elsewhere could be near.
That doesn't necessarily mean the Oppo Watch isn't coming, but it does mean we've no idea when it could come along. The fact Oppo confirmed it was coming to Europe doesn't mean it won't come to the US or Australia either, but Oppo certainly doesn't have as much a presence in those regions as it does Europe.
One rumor says the Oppo Watch will be unveiled for global markets on July 31, with presumably a release date in August, but we'll have to wait to see if that's true.
In terms of price, we haven't heard how much it'll cost when it comes to various regions, but we can make a guess based on the Chinese price.
The Oppo Watch price in China is CNY 1,499 (around $215 / £165 / AU$325). That was for a 41mm model, but there's a 46mm too which presumably will cost more (if both models are released in various regions).
While that conversion is definitely rough, and we can't say the price will be exactly that when the smartwatch comes to other regions, it does suggest the Oppo Watch will end up being an affordable device.
Oppo Watch design
The Oppo Watch looks a lot like the Apple Watch - it has a square-ish body, which you can attach to replaceable bands.
There are two Oppo Watch models - the 41mm one has a 1.6-inch screen with 360 x 320 resolution, the other has a 1.91-inch display with 448 x 368 resolution. For comparison, the largest Apple Watch 5 model has a 1.78-inch screen with a 448 x 368 resolution.
The Oppo Watch has a cool design quirk in that its display curves at the edges, like some smartphones, and that's why, as the resolution suggests, the screen isn't an exact square. The frame is aluminium or stainless steel depending on which you opt for.
It's also water resistant to up to 50m, but we don't know if it has an exact IP rating.
Oppo Watch software
The Oppo Watch in China doesn't run Google's popular Wear OS platform - instead, Oppo has gone the same route as Samsung, Huawei and Xiaomi in creating its own wearable platform which it calls ColorOS. That's the same name as its smartphone operating system, but that's just a fork of Android.
However the aforementioned release date rumor suggests the global Oppo Watch will run on Wear OS, not ColorOS.
We don't know too much about how ColorOS works on the Oppo Watch, but we know it's based on Android in some way. We also know it'll have music control functions as well as a range of fitness modes, call handling and sleep tracking.
The Oppo Watch will likely have a few special functions which only work if you've got an Oppo smartphone. That may be features like a way of sending images between the two, as some phone manufacturers add functions like this to their watches.
Oppo Watch features
The Oppo Watch has a heart rate monitor, and it's also ECG certified, so it's competitive with some of the top smartwatches in that regard.
The smartwatch is said to run on the Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 3100 platform. We say 'said' because the China-only Oppo Watch launched on the Wear 2500, but rumors suggest the international one will have the newer chipset, which has improved battery optimization and the ability to run an always-on display.
The Oppo Watch has 1GB RAM and 8GB storage, so you'll likely be able to download some music onto it for offline listening.
The two different sizes of Oppo Watch have different capacities - 300mAh for the 41mm model and 430mAh for the 46mm device, but because of the difference between screen sizes we'd expect them to last roughly the same amount of time.
Oppo says the smartwatch will last 40 hours of use - so, not very long compared to some other similar devices. It also works for 21 days in power-saving mode, which likely strips the 'smart' out of 'smartwatch'.
Apparently the watch takes 75 minutes to charge to full, but only 15 minutes to power up to 46%, which according to Oppo is enough for a full day of use. Given the aforementioned battery life specs this seems dubious, so we'll make sure to test it out when we get the Oppo Watch in for a full review.
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