‘OPPO Watch 2 is the second smartwatch with the Snapdragon Wear 4100’
Wear OS users have been asking for more energy-efficient chipsets for years. When Qualcomm announced the more energy-efficient and faster Snapdragon Wear 4100 series last year, it was received with acclaim. Manufacturers remained silent: only Mobvoi started using the Wear chipset. OPPO would now be the second manufacturer, according to leaked information about the Watch 2.
OPPO Watch 2
After OPPO entered the Wear OS ecosystem with its Watch last year, it remained unknown whether it was a one-off action, or whether the manufacturer had plans to remain active in the Wear ecosystem in the long term. Leaked details about an upcoming Wear OS watch from OPPO – which may come to be known as the OPPO Watch 2 – point to the latter option. The company also seems ready to accelerate the Wear ecosystem by using a faster chipset from Qualcomm.
OPPO’s first Wear OS watch, the OPPO Watch, was powered by the Snapdragon Wear 3100 chipset. According to XDA, OPPO is switching to the newer Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 4100 series for the Watch 2. Chipsets from the Wear series are developed by Qualcomm for wearables and smartwatches, with a focus on relatively smooth performance with low energy consumption. With the Snapdragon Wear 4100, the energy consumption has again been reduced, while the chipset is more powerful than the Wear 3100.
Details in the OPPO Watch 2 software further indicate an upgrade in the storage memory of the watch series. OPPO launched the original Watch with 8 GB storage memory. From the Watch 2, this should have been increased to 16 GB of storage. It is not known whether the working memory in the Watch 2 will also be upgraded. Given the arrival of local music storage for Spotify and YouTube Music to Wear OS, this is no superfluous luxury.
‘Unchanged design’
Information held by XDA shows that OPPO plans to launch two sizes of the Watch 2 – a 42mm and a 46mm variant. It was also announced that the watches from the Watch series offer support for LTE networks through an eSIM option. In addition, it is possible to connect the Watch 2 via WiFi networks. An LTE version of the OPPO Watch has never been released in the Netherlands or Belgium, so it is questionable whether the LTE variants of the Watch 2 series will reach the Benelux.
What the OPPO Watch 2 will look like is not yet known. Images of a Chinese OPPO poster have been published, but it is not known whether the smartwatch on that poster also concerns the OPPO Watch 2. Should the image on the poster show the Watch 2, OPPO has focused on the hardware with the Watch 2, while the design has remained the same as the original Watch.
Runs on Wear (OS)
Usually manufacturers only use Snapdragon Wear chipsets for watches that run on the Wear OS platform. It therefore seems logical to us that OPPO chooses to release the smartwatch in Europe with Wear OS, just as was the case with the OPPO Watch in July 2020. The question remains whether OPPO will release its smartwatch with the current Wear. OS software, or whether it is waiting for the launch of the renewed Wear platform, which was created in a collaboration between Google and Samsung.
It is not yet known when OPPO will release the Watch 2 in Europe. The Chinese company has not yet disclosed any details about the Chinese launch; presumably OPPO will first release the Watch in China and will follow a global launch at a later date. What do you expect from the Watch 2? Let us know in the comments at the bottom of the article.
