Although it looks a lot like the Apple Watch, the larger Oppo Watch actually has dual curved edges that the company describes as a “flexible AMOLED”, while the 41mm model is flat. Depending on the size you choose, you’ll be getting either a big 1.91-inch or 1.6-inch 1,000-nit touchscreen that should be easily readable in sunlight. 

Oppo

The smaller version has a 300mAh battery that should help it last up to 24 hours of standard smartwatch use and 14 days in a power saver mode. Meanwhile, the bigger Watch has a 430mAh cell with an estimated 36-hour runtime for the WiFi model. LTE will obviously tap the battery more and Oppo expects the cellular option to last up to 30 hours. In Power Saver, the 46mm should hang around for 21 days, whether it’s WiFi or LTE. 

These modes are similar to those you’d see on Wear OS watches powered by the Snapdragon Wear 3100 chipset, so the watch still performs basic features like showing the time and counting your steps while it’s running on low power. But Oppo also offers things like notifications and heart rate tracking in its Power Saver mode, making it slightly more useful.

The most intriguing thing about the Oppo Watch is the tweaks the company made to Wear OS on its device. It’s not just about custom watch faces, although Oppo’s default watch face helpfully displays your calories burned and steps taken. There’s also a HeyTap Health app that makes the Oppo Watch a bit better at tracking your health metrics than the average Wear OS watch. For example, you’ll get short workout tutorial videos and coached training sessions, as well as sleep tracking. Runners will also appreciate the onboard GPS for mapping their routes, while those who like swimming will welcome the water resistance of up to 5 ATM. 

This is a compelling set of features. But until we know about US pricing and can get our hands on one to try out, I’m reserving judgement — an impressive specs list is nice, but what matters more is the real world experience.

If the Wear OS-powered device is going to be anything like the earlier version, then it’ll likely have an AMOLED screen, eSIM for LTE and cellular calls, heart rate monitoring and water resistance up to 3ATM (or 5ATM on a larger model). The first Oppo Watch starts at 1,499 yuan (about $220) in China for the smaller, 41mm version, while the bigger 46mm option starts at 2,999 yuan (about $260). While that’s not as low as Mobvoi’s entry-level smartwatches, this price range is certainly on the lower end for the spectrum for a Wear OS watch. We won’t know the full specs, price and availability details till July 31st, but for now those who have been thinking about buying a Wear OS smartwatch might want to wait and see if this could be worth considering.

watchOS has always been better than its competitors on complications and watch faces — you can generally create more useful options than on Wear OS, Tizen or Fitbit OS. In watchOS 7, the faces are more customizable, and apps can finally power more than one complication per device. You can also share the faces you’ve created directly with your contacts, which should help make it easier to set up your less tech savvy parents remotely. In addition to directly sending them to contacts or downloading from the App Store, you can also get a watch face via a plugin on a website, for example. You can also do this on Wear OS, but it appears a lot more seamless with watchOS 7. Meanwhile, Samsung’s faces are limited to discovery within its Wearable app, while Fitbit’s options are pretty basic.

With these more-powerful faces, you can see things like how long ago you fed your baby, how much they ate and how much time till the next feeding at once. Though you might not have access to myriad third-party watch faces like you can on other platforms, the customizability you get in exchange might be mollifying. In fact, this was one of the things our editor-in-chief Dana Wollman asked for when she reviewed the Apple Watch Series 5, and would just make the wearable so much more helpful and intuitive.

Apple also updated its wearable platform to help users sleep better. Not only does it use the accelerometer to monitor your slumber, but watchOS 7 will also offer a Wind Down feature that helps prepare you for bedtime, gently wake you up in the morning and serve up your day’s agenda. It’s almost like a mix of Fitbit’s sleep tracking with Google’s morning reports — though let’s not forget those two companies have yet to officially merge. Fitbit does still have an upper hand over Apple here, since it taps its heart rate monitor to detect your sleep zones, which is more accurate than just accelerometer-based data.

Apple keynote (Screenshot)

I’m not a big fan of wearing a watch to bed, so seeing Apple add this feature is for me more an example of the company checking off an item on a spec sheet. But for people who do keep their watches on to log their slumber, these are important and helpful tools. 

The watchOS Workouts app has also been renamed to Fitness and will be able to track Dance as an activity towards your health metrics. You can log metrics like heart rate and duration for things like Functional Strength, Core training and cooldowns as well. This is huge for me, since I’ve been relying on sessions of Just Dance to get my heart pumping while in quarantine, and wanted a more-accurate way to track these semi-workouts. Apple uses the accelerometer once again to detect horizontal arm movements and vertical bends and rises to account for your dances — something other smartwatches don’t yet offer.

It’s the way Apple is using the Watch’s sensors to create useful tools that really has me impressed. The hand-washing detection feature, for example, uses machine-learning to understand the motions of your palms and fingers when you’re scrubbing up. But it also listens through the microphone for sounds of water and squishy soap suds for added context. That takes it beyond being the simple countdown timer (and reminder) app that we’ve seen on Google and Samsung’s products. 

Apple

Don’t get me wrong — there’s still plenty I don’t like about the Apple Watch. Its boring rectangular design, for example. Plus, its roughly one-and-a-half-day battery continues to be a problem, although Wear OS clocks in at barely two days too. The Galaxy Watch and Fitbit Versa series can last about five days. 

But with the improvements to health tracking, better use of onboard sensors, along with continued dominance when it comes to smartphone integration, the Apple Watch has become the best smartwatch, period. There aren’t a lot of reasons I would give up Android to cross back over to the iOS walled garden, but a strong watchOS and some of the other updates coming to iOS, iPadOS and macOS have me seriously considering my allegiance.

Earlier this week, we speculated on some of the ways in which Google’s purchase of Fitbit would be bad for wearables. However, there are a lot of things Google could learn from Fitbit to make Wear OS a compelling platform. The important thing here is that Google doesn’t do what it has seemingly done in every other situation like this, which is to change its mind after only a short while.

Make fitness fun and easy

It’s fair to say that Wear OS is already a competent smartwatch platform. What it lacks is a strong fitness component. There’s a lot Google could learn from Fitbit here. To start, the most important lesson is to make the experience fun. For a lot of people, working out is a chore. What Fitbit has always done well is add a sense of whimsy to something as mundane as walking 10,000 steps a day. Anytime you finish your step goal or walk after a long period of sitting, Fitbit makes it a cause for celebration with splashy graphics and words of encouragement.

Robust heart rate tracking is a must

If the first new wearable Google releases doesn’t feature Fitbit’s PurePulse heart rate tracking technology, then the acquisition will have been a missed opportunity. More so than any other hardware feature, PurePulse is the reason to buy a Fitbit wearable. After some initial foibles, the feature feels both consistent and accurate. Moreover, one of the smartest things Fitbit has done in the last few years is make the tech more affordable. What used to be a feature limited to the company’s more expensive trackers is now something you can get on the $100 Inspire HR. Reliable heart rate tracking should be a standard feature on Wear OS devices, not a nice add-on.

There’s a lot of ways in which Fitbit’s PurePulse heart rate tracking could make Wear OS a more compelling platform. One example is Fitbit’s Cardio Fitness Score feature, which leverages the company’s heart rate tracking to provide you with an easy to understand way to improve your fitness level. Heart rate tracking should be at the center of any attempt Google makes to try and create a compelling fitness platform because it would allow the company to most directly match the Apple Watch’s more advanced fitness features.

Fitbit is more than just Fitbit

In 2016, Fitbit purchased smartwatch startup Pebble’s talent and intellectual property. It’s hard to say what came out of that purchase other than the Fitbit App Gallery, which was created with help from some of the talent Fitbit acquired in the deal. The fact Fitbit seemingly never did more with Pebble’s tech seemed a missed opportunity. Pebble had a lot of interesting ideas about how smartwatches could complement a smartphone, particularly as it relates to notifications and user interface.

In addition to Pebble, through Fitbit, Google has also acquired talent and technology from Vector, Coin, Fitstar and Twine Health. Between Friday’s acquisition and its Fossil purchase earlier this year, the company now has a wealth of talent in the field. It should leverage that talent in a way that allows the company to improve the ecosystem with better software, hardware and features.

Battery life and Bluetooth performance need to go hand-in-hand

One area where Fitbit trackers have always excelled is battery life. Even taking advantage of features like heart rate and sleep tracking, you can still get close to a week of battery life on most Fitbits. And battery life is an obvious area where Wear OS can improve.

But Google shouldn’t only focus on the battery life of its smartwatches. If you’ve used a Fitbit in conjunction with an Android phone — particularly one of Google’s Pixel smartphones — you’ll know that they absolutely destroy your phone’s battery. The same is not true with iOS devices. If wearables are going to be a major aspect of Google’s Android strategy moving forward, then Bluetooth performance needs to be as good or better than it is on iOS. Likewise, Bluetooth performance and battery life can’t be an afterthought on Pixel smartphones. Part of the problem with a lot of wearables is that they’re a burden on the most important device in people’s lives, that’s something Fitbit has, for the most part, been able to avoid.

Make it social

One of the underestimated strengths of Fitbit’s platform is its social hooks. If you’ve ever bought one of the company’s trackers for a family member, then you’ll know how much your parent or sibling seeing your daily stats can motivate them to reach their own goals. Fitbit wisely built a lot of functionality that encourages people to engage in healthy competition.

For example, one of the things you can do in the Fitbit app is take part in something called Adventure Races. These essentially see you doing the digital equivalent of a tough mountain hike. Along the way, you can see how you’re doing against your friends and family members. They can be easy to overlook, but more so than any feature Fitbit offers on its trackers, it’s the social ones that keep people hooked. Studies have found that fitness trackers can help people with their physical health, but the main issue is that most people stop using their devices a couple of months after buying them. By making the experience social, Fitbit has been able to turn some users into dedicated fans. That’s something Google shouldn’t underestimate.

More than anything, what Google needs to learn from Fitbit is that Wear OS doesn’t need to be everything to everyone. The reason so many people love their Fitbits is that they do one thing and they do it exceptionally well. Apple eventually came to the same realization with watchOS. It was only after the company stopped trying to create the “next big thing” and focused on how the platform could help people with their health and fitness goals that the Apple Watch became more compelling. A similar focus is essential for Wear OS if it’s to have any chance at denting Apple’s hold on the wearables market.