Watch this space: Chinese mobe flinger OPPO flexes first shot at the wearables market

With eSIM tech for the Dick Tracy in your life

OPPO has whipped the sheets off its first watch – imaginatively titled the OPPO Watch. The news coincided with the unveiling of the OPPO Find X2 smartphone, which the Chinese tech brand introduced at a London event earlier today.

The OPPO Watch comes in 1.6-inch and 1.91-inch AMOLED flavours, with the latter having a 72.6 per cent screen-to-body ratio and showing content with 402 x 476 resolution. Both variants boast a pixel density of 326ppi. That's slightly north of what Apple would consider a "Retina display" and ultimately means stuff will look sharper and more detailed.

As you perhaps expect, the OPPO Watch uses the Android-based WearOS skinned with the firm's proprietary ColorOS. We haven't tried this yet, but if it's anything like the ColorOS that ships with the firm's handsets, it ought to offer a solid and uncluttered experience.

Pop open the OPPO Watch's slender 4.5mm frame and you'll spot a Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 2500 platform, which uses a 28nm process. There's also a Fujitsu Ambiq Apollo chip, which the watch switches to when the kit isn't being actively use in order to extend the battery life.

In "smart mode", the OPPO Watch can last 40 hours between charges. Switch on Power Saver Mode, which limits functionality to basic stuff like notifications, and you can stretch that to 21 days.

Powering the watch is a 430mAh battery, which supports OPPO's proprietary VOOC fast-charging technology. A full charge takes just 75 minutes, while 15 minutes connected to the mains gives you a 46 per cent charge, which OPPO reckons will give users around 18 hours of usage.

Punters get a reasonably generous 8GB of storage to play with, which should hold a decent number of apps, as well as a playlist or two. There's also 1GB of RAM to keep things ticking nicely.

In terms of radios, there's NFC for contactless payments, as well as Wi-Fi, GPS, and Bluetooth 4.2.

And, like the top-tier Apple Watch, OPPO's humble effort packs a cellular modem, which uses eSIM tech to connect to LTE networks. This means that you can use the OPPO Watch as a standalone device, or share your existing number with it.

There's also the usual array of fitness-related sensors, including a heart rate monitor. You'd expect this – exercise junkies are perhaps the biggest audience for wearable manufacturers.

The OPPO Watch will hit shelves in China later this year, with other territories to follow. Neither UK pricing or availability is known yet, but watch this space. ®