Is OnePlus Watch Really As Bad As Everyone Says?
The OnePlus Watch should have been one of 2021’s most compelling gadgets. Instead, it’s turned out to be one of the year’s biggest flops.
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A tech release is rarely considered a complete flop these days, but that’s exactly what has happened with the OnePlus Watch. The OnePlus Watch was supposed to be so many things but, after people actually got their hands on it, it became quickly apparent that OnePlus had dropped the ball with this one.
People have been asking for a OnePlus smartwatch ever since the OnePlus One came out in 2014. OnePlus has repeatedly proven that it does an excellent job at creating high-end smartphones for less money than most of the competition and a lot of folks were excited to see how that would translate to a smartwatch. iPhone users have the Apple Watch, Android’s best option is whatever Samsung releases with the Galaxy Watch, and the rest of the Android smartwatch competition is mostly forgettable. The door was wide open for OnePlus to do something interesting with the OnePlus Watch. What it ended up shipping is a bit of a mess.
To OnePlus’s credit, it did get a few things right with the OnePlus Watch. As far as hardware is concerned, the OnePlus Watch does everything right. It has a large stainless steel case, a vibrant 1.39-inch AMOLED display, and a comfortable watch band that can be easily replaced with any third-party one. It also comes with built-in GPS, a blood oxygen sensor, and has all of that while still lasting up to 14 days on a single charge. If all of that’s so good, what’s with all the negative response to the Watch?
The OnePlus Watch’s Biggest Issue Is The Software
In this situation, it all comes down to the software. Instead of powering the OnePlus Watch with Google’s Wear OS platform, OnePlus decided to build its own operating system. It looks like a carbon copy of Wear OS, but a lot is missing as far as functionality is concerned. There’s no tap-to-wake feature (something that’s expected on just about every smartwatch), no third-party apps, no way to reply to notifications with custom messages, no voice assistant, no support for mobile payments — the list goes on. For the things that are present on the OnePlus Watch, it all feels very unpolished. As Ben Schoon from 9to5Google points out in his review, “In many instances, ‘Please’ is substituted for ‘Pls’ including one hilarious notification. When you reach your daily step goal, the watch says that ‘Your step is up to standard. Pls keep it up.'” Even more perplexing is that the OnePlus Watch launched without a 12-hour time format, forcing people to read the time in a 24-hour style only.
Then there are the OnePlus Watch’s health features. On paper, it sounds like a solid setup. OnePlus promises all-day activity tracking, sleep tracking, stress management, and more. When that’s all put to the test in real-world use, things fall apart. Many people have reported that the OnePlus Watch counts substantially fewer steps than competing smartwatches and fitness trackers, making it a tough sell for anyone that’s half-serious about tracking their activity. There’s also a bug that prevents the OnePlus Watch from syncing its sleep tracking data with the OnePlus Health app, essentially making that data useless.
OnePlus has repeatedly confirmed that it’s aware of these bugs and is working on fixes for them. While that is encouraging to hear, it’s hard to justify spending money on a product based on promises of what it could be in the future. Even at its low price of $159, that money is better spent with a cheap Fitbit smartwatch or an older Galaxy Watch. There could be a future where the OnePlus Watch is as good as OnePlus has intended but, at least for right now, the OnePlus Watch really is as bad as everyone says.
Link Source : https://screenrant.com/oneplus-watch-bad-software-issues-bugs-explained/