Android Gets An "Apple Watch": Oppo Watch Review By MrMobile [Michael Fisher]

- This video is sponsored by Withings. Let's be real, okay? You can't talk about this product without acknowledging that it was made to look almost exactly like this product. Down to the watch faces, band design, even the retail packaging, the OPPO Watch is just the kind of copycat that the trademark standard likelihood of confusion was meant to curtail. What's more, copying the look of the Apple Watch doesn't even make much sense. I mean, think about it, the Apple Watch isn't the best smartwatch on the market because of its looks. What makes it great is a combination of features, ecosystem, and operational consistency that Google's competition has never managed to match.

So the notion of taking Google's software and putting it inside an Apple Watch look alike, to me, it sounds like the worst of all worlds. And when I agreed to review it, I expected to hate it. So imagine my surprise when after a week of using the thing, it actually won me over. (upbeat electronic music) That's the kind of reversal that might temp you to conclude I was paid for this video. So I'll put my usual disclaimer right upfront.

OPPO provided no compensation for this coverage and was offered no copy approval or early preview of this content. As always MrMobile works for you, not the manufacturers. So what kicked off my unexpected affection? Well, it started with how smoothly Wear OS runs on this watch, both in a tactical and virtual sense. The curved glass edges and soft coating on this stunning AMOLED screen, combined with the gigabyte of RAM to make swipes surprisingly slick. That's doubly surprising when you realize the spec sheet is anchored by a processor released over two years ago.

One originally intended for kids smartwatches. (record scratching) Hey guys, midnight MrMobile here. Thought I was done. Thought I was having a fine night out drinking with David Cogen. David, say hello.

- Hi. - But I'm not done working. Apparently, there's a variant of this device with the Snapdragon 3100, not the 2500, which I just found out again while drinking a lovely frose, a frozen rose. I suggest if you are of legal age and you can be careful with it, you drink it, it's a good time. But anyway, I will pin a comment with the answer when I find it out from the people who have yet to wake up.

Thanks. And it's just another reminder that when it comes to Wear OS it's the RAM more than the CPU that governs how responsive your smartwatch will be. If this were Reddit and I were 17 years old, I might propose this axiom, on Wear OS watches, gig or GTFO. And that hardware competency continues throughout the watch. Packed into the very slim 4 1/2 millimeter 5 ATM case are eight gigs of storage for music and apps, and NFC and Google Pay for mobile payments, an eSIM for cellular connectivity, a heart rate sensor, and a monster 430 milliamp power battery.21% larger than the battery in my usual go-to, the Moto 360. Though you wouldn't necessarily know it.

Stay tuned on that one. First, we've got to talk software, which in and of itself is kind of a surprise because all Wear OS are the same aren't they? Well not anymore. Some background. OPPO launched this watch in its home market of China, running a custom version of Android 8.1, with a top-level interface built on OPPO's ColorOS. You saw that software if you watched my hands-on of the OPPO Find X2.

For the European market, it smartly replaced the Android foundation with Google's Wear OS, but over the top, it built a similar ColorOS style skin. And you know what's crazy? It's actually good. I like the custom app tray. I like the preloaded health apps and custom widgets. And while the AI watch face generator doesn't quite know what to do with my particular brand of wardrobe, it's still a really cool idea.

Most importantly, the UI doesn't interfere with the things Wear OS gets right. Notifications, the Google feed, the system toggles, they're all where you expect them to be, and they all work well. The last pro I wanna cover is yet another surprise to hear myself saying. You see, I've always been an advocate for the circular smartwatch. I guess I'm a timepiece traditionalist.

But using Wear OS on a square screen has shown me some of the benefits of living in a box. ♪ Am I living in a box ♪ Text gets more space to spread out. Typing is marginally easier. And most importantly of all, that Casio calculator watch face just wouldn't look right in a circle. Facer hooked me up with a free premium account a while back and I've had fun figuring out which watch faces look right on a rhombus.

My usual "Star Trek" standby LCARS, the animated PIP-Boy, and MS-DOS has never looked better. I still prefer my circles, but now I better understand all you squares out there. Hey, it's a joke. Let's relax. That's the chillout app from Google Fit, one of many preloaded health apps, including sleep tracking.

And that, unfortunately, is where we start getting to the downsides. But since I brought up health, let's hear from a sponsor whose name I bet you already know. So Withings sponsored this video. But to steal a line from another spokesman, I was using this long before anybody paid me to use one. See about a year ago, I needed a replacement for an old and busted digital scale.

I'd heard good things about the Withings Body+ Wi-Fi scale and it turns out they were true. Now, the Body+ doesn't just measure your weight. It shows you BMI, body fat, water weight, muscle, and bone mass, and then it uses Wi-Fi to sync that data to the Health Mate app. You can actually see me gain weight over the holidays and CES, and then lose it, thanks to the CES plague, and then gain it back during quarantine. And knowing what percentage of that is water weight was helpful in tailoring my diet to the less active lifestyle of lockdown.

Instead of just frustrating me like a standard scale, this one lets me see my progress over time. So it motivates me instead. The Body+ can do the same for you and up to eight family members. And get this, order through this link by August 31st and you'll get 20% off using coupon code, MRMOBILE. To slip some sense into my segue from before, t's not the sleep tracking that's a downside of the OPPO Watch.

It's the battery life that never quite lives up to it. Yeah, as big as the battery is, Wear OS has always had a thirst for current. Pair that with the older Snapdragon and coprocessor are not, you get a watch that's gonna need to be charged every night. OPPO did its best to ease the sting, bringing over its VOOC charging technology to get you from zero to about half a charge in just 15 minutes and a full charge in 75. Another shortcoming OPPO inherited from the Apple Watch? These bands are swappable, yes, but you can only use those made for this specific watch, which shuts out basically the entire aftermarket band catalog.

And while we're back on the Apple Watch, OPPO decided not to copy the one thing that makes every smartwatch better. There's no rotating crown, just two side buttons with only one of them programmable with a shortcut. Also, don't expect the magic haptic taps you get from the Apple product, this vibration motor is nothing special. And the same goes for the speakerphone. Loud enough for indoors but not really anywhere else.

And for me, those downsides are enough to torpedo the OPPO Watch, mainly because of my aforementioned antipathy toward remorseless ripoffs. But at the end of the day, the thing I love most about Wear OS is choice. For too long, that ecosystem has been without a proper non-circular selection. And while exact release details weren't final by press time, if it's European prices anywhere close to it's China pricing, man, this thing might just sell itself. If what you want is a square smartwatch that runs Wear OS legitimately better than any other wearable, you should seriously consider strapping the OPPO Watch to your wrist.

If instead a round smartwatch is more your speed, or you want a real Apple product, check out my reviews of the resurrected Moto 360 from earlier this year and the Apple Watch Series 5 respectively. Also, something tells me this isn't the last smartwatch I'll be covering this season, so be sure you're subscribed to theMrMobile on YouTube so you don't miss it. Until next time, thanks for watching. And if you can't stay home, then stay safe and mask up while you stay mobile, my friends.

Source : MrMobile [Michael Fisher]