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OnePlus Watch 2 Battery Life? It’s 100+ Hours – Here’s How…
Google’s Wear OS has its issues, notably with power management and battery life. But Google and OnePlus have cooked up a hybrid version for the OnePlus Watch 2 – is it better?
TL;DR: OnePlus Watch 2 Nails 100-Hour Battery With Wear OS Hybrid
- Hybrid Tech 🔄: Innovative interface with Google for 100-hour battery life.
- Dual OS 🧠: Switches between RTOS for efficiency and Wear OS for advanced features.
- Smart Power 🔋: RTOS on BES 2700 chip for basics; Snapdragon W5+ for complex tasks.
- Efficient Design 💡: Dual-chip architecture optimizes power; seamless switching saves battery.
- Seamless Experience 🌐: Smooth transitions between power modes; maintains premium user feel.
The OnePlus Watch 2 is now available – check all the latest offers and deals here.
A Wear OS-powered watch with 100 hours battery life? Sounds like science fiction, right? Until very recently it was. But then Google and OnePlus decided to do something about it, and that is where Wear OS hybrid interface comes into play.
What is Wear OS Hybrid Interface?
OnePlus has unveiled its latest smartwatch, the OnePlus Watch 2, which uses an innovative hybrid interface co-developed with Google to achieve an extended battery life up to 100 hours.
The key to the vastly improved endurance is a dual operating system that seamlessly switches between a power-efficient RTOS chipset for basic functions and the more demanding Wear OS for advanced operations.
In low-power mode, the OnePlus Watch 2 runs on a BES 2700 microcontroller with RTOS to handle notifications, fitness tracking and always-on display. For more complex tasks like third-party apps, Google Assistant and navigation, it activates the Snapdragon W5+ chip with Wear OS.
Wear OS smartwatches have a dual-chipset architecture inclusive of a powerful application processor (AP) and ultra low-power co-processor microcontroller unit (MCU). The architecture has a powerful AP capable of handling complex operations en-masse, and is seamlessly coupled with a low power MCU.
The Wear OS hybrid interface enables intelligent switching between the MCU or the AP, allowing the AP to be suspended when not needed to preserve battery life. It helps, for instance, achieve more power-efficient experiences, like sensor data processing on the MCU while the AP is asleep. At the same time, the hybrid interface provides a seamless transition between these states, keeping a rich and premium user experience without jarring transitions between power modes.
Google
OnePlus Watch 2 Will Last 30 Days In Standby Mode
This optimized approach allows the OnePlus Watch 2 to operate like a traditional smartwatch when active but sip power when idle. OnePlus claims up to 30 days of standby time and a week of typical use before charging.
Other specs include 1GB RAM, 32GB storage, IP68 water resistance and a 500 mAh battery supporting rapid charging. There’s also a 1.43″ OLED screen protected by a 2.5D sapphire crystal cover.
Starting at $299, the OnePlus Watch 2 will be available in the US and Canada beginning March 4. It lacks LTE but includes NFC for contactless payments through Google Wallet.
And at that price and with these levels of improvement to its battery life, I can see a lot of users picking one up.
Will All Wear OS Watches Get Hybrid Interface?
OnePlus and Google’s hybrid OS could provide a blueprint for extending battery life on future smartwatches if it performs as promised. For now, it represents an ambitious attempt to solve a longstanding pain point.
But the fact that Google has worked closely with OnePlus tells me that wider plans are afoot. One of the biggest criticisms of smartwatches, both of the Apple and Wear OS kind, is that the battery life sucks.
Google has made all of the tools and APIs it used to create Wear OS Hybrid Interface available to developers.
Having to charge and top-up your smartwatch, as well as your phone and your wireless headphones, every other day is a pain. Extending the battery life of Wear OS watches to 30 days standby and 100 hours of usage time would give them a huge USP over Apple Watch.
And Google knows that Apple is king of the wearables space, with its hyper popular Apple Watch and AirPods. If it is to give Apple even the slightest pause for concern, it will have to do it with something like this – something that adds in a metric-ton more usability to its products.
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