OnePlus announced that a smartwatch is in the works at the company, and that it will release sometime in early 2021.
The news comes from OnePlus CEO Pete Lau himself, who tweeted about the smartwatch’s existence. He had previously confirmed the device’s existence in an interview with Input Mag, although not many details were given.
However, it’s possible that the smartwatch will make use of Google’s Wear OS. In that interview, Lau shared that OnePlus was working with Google on that OS, saying, “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.”
Lau also told Input Mag of OnePlus’ commitment to the smart TV and how smartwatches fit in. “Our focus is on how to connect these smart displays in a way that they're seamlessly connected to your other devices,” he said. “This includes your smartphone or smartwatch products of which we have future plans for our own.” An example of this seamlessness he gave was having smartwatch notifications appear “seamlessly” on the TV, using the smartwatch to control the smart display, and having the smartwatch “eventually” make the smart display sleep after detecting that the user has fallen asleep.
OnePlus had been working on a smartwatch a few years back, with supposed leaks of the device’s design emerging in 2014. In a 2016 interview with The Wall Street Journal, Lau said, “We had completed the design but we still decided to scrap it. We have to be focused”.
