It's 2024. All smartwatches should offer several days of battery life, period. As things stand now, there is a surprisingly wide range of devices. I would go so far as to say that the limited battery has been, and continues to be, the biggest problem with the Apple Watch. The Series 9 currently has a battery life of 18 hours in standard mode and 36 in low power mode.
Meanwhile, OnePlus' upcoming Watch 2 promises a staggering 100 hours “in full smart mode.” This is, of course, exactly the kind of statement that's best taken with a few grains of salt ahead of the wearable's official unveiling next week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. I would go a step further and tell interested parties to wait for the first reviews to arrive.
According to a Blog Post, the company took a “three-year hiatus and reflective pause after the OnePlus Watch 1.”
The battery is precisely the kind of thing OnePlus needs to lean on. The first-generation product promised up to two weeks of battery life thanks to a 3,402 mAh battery, or 25 hours with GPS off. Even then, it was the main feature of a watch that failed to impress. It's not so much that it's impossible to get noticed among Wear OS devices, it's more that one has to go the extra mile, especially now that Google and Samsung are making devices for the operating system.
OnePlus showed that it can still impress, even when it's not the first to market. That was a theme in the early days of its smartphone launches, and the company proved its worth with the OnePlus Open. I was among the reviewers who were genuinely surprised that I liked the product as much as I did. This is nothing specific to OnePlus, but rather a comment on the state of consumer electronics.
Talking about 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 major differentiator when OnePlus initially launched. However, having a direct line like this is difficult to maintain as companies grow. Since then, the smartphone maker has also formally joined Chinese hardware giant Oppo.
That said, it doesn't take hours of direct conversations with users to know that battery life is paramount in smartwatches. These things are designed to be worn all day and night. That doesn't leave much space for loading. Being able to use a device for several days without having to worry about those things greatly improves the experience. It also gives a more complete picture of your fitness and sleep patterns when you're not charging it 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 world of smartwatches. Perhaps leaning on battery life significantly will improve your luck for the second round. I'm not going to hold my breath on a category that's currently packed with a few big names and monopolized by extremely cheap devices at the other end. That said, anything that re-centralizes the importance of better battery life is likely to be a net positive for the category.