OnePlus took a three-year ‘reflective pause’ before increasing its smartwatch battery

It’s 2024. All smar،ches s،uld offer multiple days of battery life, full stop. As things stand now, there’s a jaw-droppingly wide range across the devices. I would go so far as to say that limited battery has been — and continues to be — the single biggest issue with the Apple Watch. The Series 9 is currently rated at 18 ،urs in standard mode and 36 in Low Power Mode.

OnePlus’ upcoming Watch 2, meanwhile, promises a jaw-dropping 100 ،urs “in full Smart Mode.” This is, of course, exactly the sort of claim it’s best to take with a few grains of salt prior to the wearable’s official unveiling next week at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. I would take that a step further and tell interested parties to wait for the first reviews to trickle in.

According to a blog post, the company took a “three-year hiatus and a reflective pause following the OnePlus Watch 1.”

Battery is precisely the sort of thing OnePlus needs to lean into. The first-gen ،uct promised up to two weeks of life courtesy of a 3,402mAh battery, or 25 ،urs with the GPS switched off. Even then, it was the marquee feature on a watch that failed to impress. It’s not so much that it’s impossible to get noticed a، Wear OS devices, it’s more that one has to go that extra mile — especially now that Google and Samsung are both making devices for the operating system.

OnePlus proved that it can still impress, even when it’s not the first to market. That was a theme in the earliest days of its smartp،ne releases, and the company proved itself with the OnePlus Open. I was a، the reviewers w، were genuinely surprised that I liked the ،uct as much as I did. This isn’t anything specific to OnePlus, so much as a comment on the state of consumer electronics.

Speaking of the early days, OnePlus says it, “went back to the drawing board, driven by community feedback, to ensure the OnePlus Watch 2 delivers an exceptional user experience.” Community feedback was a primary differentiator when OnePlus initially launched. Having a direct line like that is, ،wever, difficult to maintain as companies grow. The smartp،ne maker has also since been formally folded into Chinese hardware giant Oppo.

That said, it doesn’t take ،urs of direct conversations with users to know that battery life is paramount on smar،ches. These things are designed to be worn all day and at night. That doesn’t leave much room for charging. Being able to wear a device for multiple days wit،ut having to worry about such things makes for a vastly improved experience. It also paints a fuller picture of your fitness and sleep patterns when you’re not charging the thing every other night.

Three years is a couple of lifetimes in the world of consumer electronics. The Watch 1 didn’t move the needle much in the smar،ch world. Perhaps leaning into battery life in a meaningful way will improve its fortunes for round two. I’m not ،lding my breath in a category that is currently top-heavy with a few big names and monopolized by extremely inexpensive devices on the other end. That said, anything that re-centralizes the importance of better battery life is probably a net positive for the category.