Update: The OnePlus Watch is now official. Read our full OnePlus Watch - everything you need to know guide.
The CEO of OnePlus – Pete Lau – has confirmed the company is working on a smartwatch, and that it’s likely to run Wear OS.
There are few details on what we’re likely to see – but it seems the company is working with Google to improve interoperability between its TVs and other smart products.
The OnePlus smartwatch is probably one of the most storied devices in Wareable history. We first reported rumors the company was working on a smartwatch back in 2014, but the project was canned.
Since then, the smartwatch market has boomed, with the Chinese smartphone brands muscling in on the wearables action.
OnePlus is owned by the same company as Oppo and Realme – both of which have released smartwatches in 2020. So OnePlus has gone from early pioneer to wearables laggard – but not for much longer.
In the interview with Input Mag, Lau said:
“Wear OS definitely has room to improve. What we're trying to do is work with Google to try to improve the connectivity between the Wear OS ecosystem, Android TV, and Android smartphones to create this ability for better device interoperability across the ecosystems.
"This has been something looked at very positively from Google's side as well, so this is the direction that we're trying to develop, but we don't have more than we can share on that right now.”
But the company has moved to pour water on speculation that the new smartwatch will run Wear OS.
Nothing is confirmed – but if OnePlus is actively working with Google on Wear OS, it seems a shoe-in that the operating system will run the show.
Watch this space, as it seems the long saga of the OnePlus smartwatch still has some way to go.
How we test
James is the co-founder of Wareable, and he has been a technology journalist for 15 years.
He started his career at Future Publishing, James became the features editor of T3 Magazine and T3.com and was a regular contributor to TechRadar – before leaving Future Publishing to found Wareable in 2014.
James has been at the helm of Wareable since 2014 and has become one of the leading experts in wearable technologies globally. He has reviewed, tested, and covered pretty much every wearable on the market, and is passionate about the evolving industry, and wearables helping people achieve healthier and happier lives.