Chinese smartphone manufacturer Oppo is about to officially unveil its first foray into the wearables market.
A smartwatch from the company has been rumoured for some time, but it’s now official, right down to the Oppo Watch name. The company posted a teaser on Twitter with the hashtag #OPPOWatch alongside a couple of pictures of the device and a promise of a March 6 global launch.
It's time to say hello to #OPPOWatch. ?
Unveiled at the #OPPOFindX2 Launch Event March 6, 10.30am CET. ⏰ pic.twitter.com/IwbOJnHoyg
— OPPO (@oppo) March 2, 2020
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The design looks very familiar to anybody who has ever used an Apple Watch, although the interface looks pretty different. There’s no digital crown, for a start, with two buttons on the right-hand side. It looks like the screen is gently curved at the edges too, which is certainly a stylish look, albeit one that could make it more vulnerable to scrapes and drops.
Given the two renders just show incoming calls from ‘Eddie’ and ‘Ethan’, it’s not clear what operating system the new watch will use, but there may be a clue elsewhere on the web. A purported leak on the Weibo social network purports to show the settings menu of the watch, where users can dig deeper into passwords, battery and the buttons.
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Could it be Google’s own Wear OS? Possibly, but if so it’s got a skin on top of it. It’s more likely that the company has taken the same route as Samsung and Huawei, and decided to run its own operating system. That’s far easier to do on smartwatches than phones, where apps are few and far between and the core functionality is all important.
Oppo will be revealing all at an event on March 6, which kicks off at 9:30AM GMT. The company also plans on unveiling the Oppo Find X2 smartphone that day as well, so something for wearable sceptics too.
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