In yet another sign of the growing alliance between Google and Samsung, today both companies announced that they are essentially combining Wear OS — Google’s operating system — and the Tizen-based software platform that has been foundational to Samsung’s wearables for many years. The resulting platform is currently being referred to simply as “Wear,” though that might not be the final name.
Benefits of the joint effort include significant improvements to battery life, 30 percent faster loading times for apps, and smoother animations. It also simplifies life for developers and will create one central smartwatch OS for the Android platform. Google is also promising a greater selection of apps and watch faces than ever before.
“All device makers will be able to add a customized user experience on top of the platform, and developers will be able to use the Android tools they already know and love to build for one platform and ecosystem,” Google’s Bjorn Kilburn wrote in a blog post.
Wired has more details on what’s to come, including the tidbit that Samsung will stick with its popular rotating bezel on future devices — but it’s finished making Tizen-only smartwatches. There will also be a version of Google Maps that works standalone (meaning without your phone nearby) and a YouTube Music app that supports offline downloads.
Wear will make it easier to multitask across smartwatch widgets and apps.Image: Google
Samsung confirmed that its next Galaxy Watch will run on this unified platform. And future Fitbit devices will also run the software. Aside from merging the technologies of both platforms, the new Wear OS will include improvements that make it easier to multitask between wrist apps. And some of Fitbit’s “most popular” fitness tracking features will also be included.
OnePlus has released its latest update for the OnePlus Watch, adding its promised always-on display mode that was absent on the device when it first launched in April. But being able to always see the time on OnePlus’ smartwatch comes at a big cost, with the company cautioning that the new mode will halve the expected battery life when using it.
The release of the always-on display was surprisingly swift for OnePlus, which announced that it planned to add the feature just two weeks ago. The company says in a blog post that the B.48 update that adds the new feature will arrive for a “small percentage” of users first, with wider rollout over the coming days.
In addition to enabling the always-on display, the B.48 update also adds the option to use the OnePlus Watch as a remote camera button, a new “Marathon” workout mode, and other improvements, optimizations, and bug fixes.
While the new always-on display option does fix one of the OnePlus Watch’s glaring absences, the fact that it comes with such a big hit in battery life makes it a tougher trade-off for users (especially given that battery life was one of the watch’s highlights.)
The full OnePlus Watch B.48 update changelog is below:
Add Always-on Display dial*
Remote Control Camera function
Add Marathon workout
Improvements
Optimize system UI details
Fix known issues and improve system stability.
*After Always-on Display dial is turned on, the screen remains constantly on. This will lead to increased power consumption. Battery life will be reduced by about half.
A bunch of traditional and not-so-traditional gift ideas
May 5th, 2021, 9:00am EDT
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Finding a good gift for Father’s Day can be really difficult — especially with all those “traditional” dad gifts out there that are just, well, boring. So this year, we’ve looked around for some special, interesting gifts for dad in a wide range of types and prices.
We’ve got a bunch of stuff for the do-it-yourselfer: a Leatherman multitool, the ultimate gardening tool, and a whiskey- and rum-making kit. For the tech enthusiast, we’ve got a VR device, a gaming mouse, and a mini electric screwdriver set. And for the lovers of quirk, we offer a New York City brunch, a desk toy that can form a dodecahedron, and a subscription for two vinyl records a month, among a load of other great gift ideas. Enjoy!
Apple TV 4K
The Apple TV 4K is a great TV box for sharing photos, watching videos, and playing music for a party. Sure, it’s a bit of an expensive gift, but this is a shiny new version, and it is on its way. And even better, it has a new remote.
$179 at APPLE
$164 at AMAZON
ABLY Mini Electric Screwdriver Set
This powered screwdriver with dozens of bits is an indispensable tool for anyone who likes taking apart gadgets or small electronics. This one also comes with a handy magnetic mat for organizing screws. It’s perfect for when dad wants to upgrade the RAM in his gaming laptop.
$46 at AMAZON
Apple Watch SE
A smartwatch is a great gift. If dad is an Apple person, the Apple Watch SE will help him track his exercise, keep in touch, listen to tunes — and even tell the time.
$279 at APPLE
$279 at AMAZON
Ticwatch Pro 3
If dad’s an Android user, the Ticwatch Pro 3 is a good-looking watch that should take care of everything he needs in a smartwatch. According to our reviewer, it takes Wear OS as far as it can go.
$300 at AMAZON
Oculus Quest 2 headset
It’s fun to game with others, but sometimes it’s even better to slip off into your own little virtual world. The Oculus Quest 2 is a smart purchase if dad wants to explore virtual environments or get sweaty moving to the music in Beat Saber.
$299 at OCULUS
Misto oil sprayer
This reusable spray bottle lets you evenly coat veggies, meats, and anything in between with oil, vinegar, lemon juice, sherry, or other liquids. It makes cooking easy and enjoyable for the foodie dad.
$10 at AMAZON
$10 at TARGET
Leatherman Free P2 multitool
This P2 multitool (pliers, scissors, screwdrivers, wire stripper, etc.) can flip in and out one-handed, thanks to a combination of lightly spring-loaded locks and magnetic clasps. If you need to quickly snip a zip tie on a kid’s new scooter or slice into a grilled chicken breast to test doneness, it’s a snap.
$120 at LEATHERMAN
$120 at AMAZON
Custom money clip
If dad is still into cash, this money clip offers a way to carry bills around with convenience and class. You can personalize it with initials, a name, or any message up to 100 characters.
$16 at ETSY
Speks Geode desk toy
This fidget toy is made up of magnetic pentagons that can form a dodecahedron or be built up into a variety of weird constructions. It’s a great way to keep hands busy during boring Zoom meetings or for quick work breaks.
$20 at AMAZON
Vintage ballcaps
Dads look cool in these vintage baseball caps from Ebbets Field Flannels. There’s a whole variety of styles representing teams from long-closed leagues to choose from.
$49 at EBBETS FLANNEL
Zyllion Shiatsu back and neck massager
If your favorite parent has a sore back or sore muscles from chasing after toddlers, this home massager can help. According to The Strategist, this is the best model to get — and it’s way cheaper than going to a massage therapist.
$50.00 at AMAZON
La-Z-Boy recliner
This gift is on the expensive side, but it’s worth it. It is actually the most comfortable chair ever, especially if dad has back pain. And even if he doesn’t, it’s great for working from home and relaxing.
$399 at LA-Z-BOY
Mpix framed prints
Framed prints of the family photos that are currently languishing on your phone always make terrific gifts. Mpix is the consumer imprint for Millers, a longtime professional photo lab, and it excels at both quality and speed.
$40 at MPIX
WPA-era National Park posters
Commemorate a favorite family vacation with a faithful reproduction of one of the Works Progress Administration’s National Park serigraphed posters, designed between 1935 and 1943. (Frame not included.)
$45 at RANGER DOUG
Apple TV 4K
The Apple TV 4K is a great TV box for sharing photos, watching videos, and playing music for a party. Sure, it’s a bit of an expensive gift, but this is a shiny new version, and it is on its way. And even better, it has a new remote.
$179 at APPLE
$164 at AMAZON
ABLY Mini Electric Screwdriver Set
This powered screwdriver with dozens of bits is an indispensable tool for anyone who likes taking apart gadgets or small electronics. This one also comes with a handy magnetic mat for organizing screws. It’s perfect for when dad wants to upgrade the RAM in his gaming laptop.
$46 at AMAZON
Apple Watch SE
A smartwatch is a great gift. If dad is an Apple person, the Apple Watch SE will help him track his exercise, keep in touch, listen to tunes — and even tell the time.
$279 at APPLE
$279 at AMAZON
Ticwatch Pro 3
If dad’s an Android user, the Ticwatch Pro 3 is a good-looking watch that should take care of everything he needs in a smartwatch. According to our reviewer, it takes Wear OS as far as it can go.
$300 at AMAZON
Oculus Quest 2 headset
It’s fun to game with others, but sometimes it’s even better to slip off into your own little virtual world. The Oculus Quest 2 is a smart purchase if dad wants to explore virtual environments or get sweaty moving to the music in Beat Saber.
$299 at OCULUS
Misto oil sprayer
This reusable spray bottle lets you evenly coat veggies, meats, and anything in between with oil, vinegar, lemon juice, sherry, or other liquids. It makes cooking easy and enjoyable for the foodie dad.
$10 at AMAZON
$10 at TARGET
Leatherman Free P2 multitool
This P2 multitool (pliers, scissors, screwdrivers, wire stripper, etc.) can flip in and out one-handed, thanks to a combination of lightly spring-loaded locks and magnetic clasps. If you need to quickly snip a zip tie on a kid’s new scooter or slice into a grilled chicken breast to test doneness, it’s a snap.
$120 at LEATHERMAN
$120 at AMAZON
Custom money clip
If dad is still into cash, this money clip offers a way to carry bills around with convenience and class. You can personalize it with initials, a name, or any message up to 100 characters.
$16 at ETSY
Speks Geode desk toy
This fidget toy is made up of magnetic pentagons that can form a dodecahedron or be built up into a variety of weird constructions. It’s a great way to keep hands busy during boring Zoom meetings or for quick work breaks.
$20 at AMAZON
Vintage ballcaps
Dads look cool in these vintage baseball caps from Ebbets Field Flannels. There’s a whole variety of styles representing teams from long-closed leagues to choose from.
$49 at EBBETS FLANNEL
Zyllion Shiatsu back and neck massager
If your favorite parent has a sore back or sore muscles from chasing after toddlers, this home massager can help. According to The Strategist, this is the best model to get — and it’s way cheaper than going to a massage therapist.
$50.00 at AMAZON
La-Z-Boy recliner
This gift is on the expensive side, but it’s worth it. It is actually the most comfortable chair ever, especially if dad has back pain. And even if he doesn’t, it’s great for working from home and relaxing.
$399 at LA-Z-BOY
Mpix framed prints
Framed prints of the family photos that are currently languishing on your phone always make terrific gifts. Mpix is the consumer imprint for Millers, a longtime professional photo lab, and it excels at both quality and speed.
$40 at MPIX
WPA-era National Park posters
Commemorate a favorite family vacation with a faithful reproduction of one of the Works Progress Administration’s National Park serigraphed posters, designed between 1935 and 1943. (Frame not included.)
The Apple Watch Series 3 was first released in September 2017, bringing fitness improvements and a faster processor. Nearly four years later, in 2021, Apple is still selling the Series 3 as its entry-level Apple Watch model starting at $199, an $80 savings compared to the more recent Apple Watch SE. Only, as I’ve recently learned, “still selling” and “supporting in a reasonable manner” are two very different things, and updating an Apple Watch Series 3 in 2021 is a nightmare of infuriating technological hoops to jump through.
Normally, updating an Apple Watch is an annoyingly long but straightforward process: you charge your Watch up to 50 percent, plug it in, and wait for the slow process of the update transferring and installing to your smartwatch.
But the non-cellular Apple Watch Series 3 has a tiny 8GB of internal storage, a fair chunk of which is taken up by the operating system and other critical software. So installing a major update — like the recently released watchOS 7.4 — goes something like this:
Unpair and wipe your Apple Watch to factory settings
Set up the Apple Watch again and restore from backup
Realize you weren’t supposed to restore from your backup yet
Watch an episode or two of Brooklyn Nine-Nine while you wait for the backup to finish restoring
Start from step one again — but as a brand-new Apple Watch, without restoring from an existing backup
Update completely fresh Apple Watch, which now has enough free memory to update
Consider how much you actually want to use this face unlocking feature everyone keeps hyping up in the first place
Unpair and wipe the Apple Watch a third time
Restore from your backup and finally use normally
And the issue seems to apply whether you’ve installed a pile of apps or not. Apple’s support website doesn’t even recommend that Series 3 owners bother trying to clear up space — it just advocates that they go straight to the aforementioned reset cycle.
It’s clear that the current process is untenable.
I’m an editor at a technology news site and willing to put in the comical amount of time and energy to manage this, frustrating as it might be. But if you’re a more casual user — the same one who is likely to own an older, outdated Watch in the first place — why on earth would you bother with the worst update mechanism since GE’s instructions for resetting a smart bulb? And being able to update your hardware’s software is important: the just-released watchOS 7.4.1, for example, patches a critical security flaw. But with it being so difficult to install, there’s a good chance that plenty of Series 3 owners won’t bother.
I know that Apple loves to claim support for as many older hardware generations as it can with each new update. It’s one of the biggest appeals of Apple products, compared to the lackluster pace of updates on competing Android phones (like the just-deprecated Galaxy S8).
But the miserable update process for the Series 3 is a strong argument that Apple is being a little too generous with what it considers “current” hardware. Keeping the Series 3 around this long was always a money grab, a way for Apple to clear out old inventory and take advantage of mature manufacturing processes that have long since broken even in order to appeal to users who really can’t afford the extra $80 for the markedly better Apple Watch SE. It’s a similar trend to the inexplicably still-on-sale Apple TV HD, which is almost six years old and costs just $30 less than the brand-new 4K model. (Much like the Series 3, don’t buy a new Apple TV HD in 2021 either.)
But hopefully, with the announcement of watchOS 8 almost assuredly around the corner at WWDC this June, the company takes into account the basic functionality of its hardware when considering what it does and doesn’t offer support for. Because if Apple is going to insist on selling a product this old in the future, it’s going to need to be a lot more mindful of just how it actually handles its software support.
(Pocket-lint) – The Amazfit T-Rex Pro is a sportswatch built for outdoor lovers. Its maker, Zepp Health, has sought to make it a better companion for trail runs, hikes and open water swims than the original 2020 T-Rex model – by making the Pro better suited to surviving in extreme conditions and adding new sensors to offer richer metrics too.
A core part of the T-Rex Pro is its affordable price point – it’s significantly cheaper than most outdoor watches, so could save you some money if you wanted something to take out on adventures. But while the price and feature set might read as appealing, does this T-Rex bring future goodness or is it a bit of a dinosaur at launch?
Design & Display
Measures: 47.7mm (diameter) x 13.5mm (thickness)
1.3-inch touchscreen display, 360 x 360 resolution
10ATM waterproofing (to 100m depth)
Weighs: 59.4g
The T-Rex Pro largely sticks to the same design formula as the T-Rex. There’s a similar-sized 47mm polycarbonate case, matched with a 22mm silicone rubber strap, all weighing in at 59.4g. To put that into perspective: the 47mm Garmin Fenix 6 weighs 80g, and the Polar Grit X weighs 66g. So the T-Rex Pro is a lighter watch thanks to that plastic case. We’d almost like a bit more weight to it, if anything.
Pocket-lint
There’s also a chunky bezel with exposed machined screws to emphasise its rugged credentials – and it’s passed more military grade tests than the original T-Rex to make it better suited to the outdoors. The Pro attains 15 military grade tests – up from the original’s 12 – and is built to handle extreme humidity and freezing temperatures.
Along with those improved military grade toughness credentials, it’s also ramped up the water-resistance rating – offering protection up to 100 metres depth (10ATM). The ‘non-Pro’ T-Rex can be submerged in water up to 50 metres.
At the heart of that light, rugged, chunky exterior is a 1.3-inch AMOLED touchscreen display, which can be set to always-on. Tempered glass and an anti-fingerprint coating has been used to make it a more durable and smudge-free display – and we can confirm it’s a screen that doesn’t give you that unattractive smudgy look as its predecessor suffered.
Pocket-lint
It’s a bright and colourful screen, with good viewing angles. In bright outdoor light, that vibrancy isn’t quite as punchy as in more favourable conditions, but it’s on the whole a good quality display to find on a watch at this price.
Around the back is where you’ll find the optical sensors and the charging pins for when you need to power things back up again. It uses the same slim charging setup as the T-Rex, which magnetically clips itself in place and securely stays put when it’s time to charge.
Fitness & Features
GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo satellite system support
Firstbeat training analysis
Heart rate monitor
SPO2 sensor
In true Amazfit fashion, the T-Rex Pro goes big on sports modes – and includes the kinds of sensors that should make it a good workout companion.
There’s 100 sports modes up from just the 14 included in the standard T-Rex. It still covers running, cycling and swimming (pool and open water), but it’s also added profiles for activities like surfing, dance, and indoor activities like Pilates.
The majority of these new modes will offer you the basics in terms of metrics, though modes like surfing and hiking will offer additional ones like speed and ascent/descent data in real-time. The addition of an altimeter here means you can capture richer elevation data, which is useful if you’re a fan of getting up high and hitting those mountains and hilly terrain.
For outdoor tracking, there’s support for four satellite systems with GPS, GLONASS, Beidou and Galileo all on board to improve mapping accuracy. You don’t have any type of navigation features to point you in the right direction, though, nor can you upload routes to follow on the watch.
For road and off-road runs, we found core metrics were reliable during our testing. GPS-based distance tracking came up a little short compared to a Garmin Enduro sportswatch, plus we had issues inside of the app generating maps of our routes as well.
Best Garmin watch 2021: Fenix, Forerunner and Vivo compared
By Chris Hall
·
Swim tracking metrics were generally reliable and it was a similar story for indoor bike and rowing sessions. In the pool, it was a couple of lengths short of the Enduro’s swim tracking, though stroke counts for indoor rowing largely matched up to what we got from a Hydow rowing machine.
But when you dig a little deeper beyond core metrics, some of the T-Rex Pro’s data seems a little questionable. If you’re happy to stick to the basics, though, then the Pro does a good enough job.
Along with manual tracking, there’s support for automatic exercise recognition for eight of those sports modes. This is something we’ve seen crop up on Fitbit, Garmin and Samsung smartwatches with varying success. On the T-Rex Pro, you’ll need to select whether to automatically track activities like running, swimming and indoor rowing. As Zepp Health outlines: there can be instances where accidental recognition can happen with some activities when you jump on a bus or a car. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case for us.
Zepp Health’s newest BioTracker 2 optical sensor is included to power a host of heart-rate features outside of continuous monitoring and measuring effort levels during exercise. It’s also used for the PAI scores, which seeks to shift the attention away from counting steps to regularly raising heart rate through exercise. It’s also used for taking heart rate variability measurements to track stress levels and is used for training insights – like those found on Garmin watches – that will generate VO2 Max scores, training effect, training load, and recovery times.
As far as the reliability of that heart rate monitoring, the Amazfit is better suited to resting heart rate and continuous heart rate data as opposed to relying on exercise and those additional training and fitness insights. In our testing it generally posted higher maximum heart rate readings and lower average heart rate readings compared to a Garmin HRM Pro heart rate monitor chest strap. Those readings were enough to put us in different heart rate zones, which undermines the usefulness of those training insights and PAI scores.
That sensor also unlocks blood oxygen measurements with a dedicated SpO2 app on board to offer on-the-spot measurements. It can be used to offer alerts when you hit major altitude changes. We didn’t get up high enough to trigger those altitude alerts but did compare on-the-spot measurements against a pulse oximeter and they largely all matched up.
Pocket-lint
You’ll get those staple activity tracking features here too, such as capturing daily step counts and monitoring sleep as well as naps, capturing sleep stages and breathing quality, which is tagged as a beta feature and makes use of the new onboard SpO2 sensor.
We found step counts were at times well within the counts of a Fitbit smartwatch – but also some days where we registered longer step totals there was a much bigger difference.
When you’re not tracking your fitness, the Pro does do its duty as a smartwatch too. It runs on Zepp Health’s own RTOS software – and while it might not be the most feature-rich smartwatch experience, it will give you a little more than the basics.
Google Android and Apple iPhone users can view notifications, control music playing on your phone, along with setting up alarms, reminders and changing watch faces. You don’t have payments, the ability to download apps, a music player or a smart assistant, which has appeared on some Amazfit watches.
Pocket-lint
Notification support is of the basic kind, letting you view notifications from native and third-party apps, but not respond to them. They’re easy to read, but what you can read varies based on the type of notification. If you happen to have multiple notifications from the same app, it struggles to display them all and merely lets you know you have multiple messages. Music controls work well as they do on other Amazfit watches and features like weather forecasts and watch faces are well optimised to that touchscreen display.
Performance & Battery Life
Up to 18 days in typical usage
Up to 9 days in heavy usage
40 hours of GPS battery life
The T-Rex Pro features a 390mAh capacity battery – matching what’s packed into the T-Rex. That should give you 18 days in typical usage, 9 days in heavy usage, with an impressive 40 hours of GPS battery life.
Like other Amazfit watches, those battery numbers tend to be based on some very specific lab testing scenarios. In our experience, it’s always felt a little on the generous side. In our time with the T-Rex Pro, we got to around the 10 day mark on a single charge. That was with regular GPS tracking, continuous heart rate monitoring, stress monitoring, and the richer sleep tracking enabled. We had the screen on max brightness but not in always-on mode.
Pocket-lint
The standard T-Rex felt like it was good for a solid week using it in similar conditions, orring 20 days in typical usage by comparison – but the Pro can get you longer than a week even with some of the more demanding features in use.
Things seem to have improved on the GPS battery front as well. An hour of using the GPS usually knocked the Pro’s battery just under 10 per cent, while the T-Rex usually lost 10 per cent from 30 minutes using the GPS. It might not be the 40 hours that was promised, but the Pro does seem to hold up a little better than the T-Rex when it comes to tracking.
Verdict
The T-Rex Pro is a solid outdoor watch offering that’s missing one key ingredient that would makes it a great one – there’s no maps to point you in the right direction when you think you’re lost.
Otherwise, if you want something that offers a durable design and can track your outdoor activities, then the T-Rex Pro’s chunky-but-light design will no doubt appeal to adventurers on a budget. Its fitness and sports tracking features by and large do a good enough job too.
So if you’re hoping that you’ll be able to get an experience that rivals what the Garmin Fenix, Instinct, and the likes of the Polar Grit X can offer, then this T-Rex isn’t quite the full package. But that’s reflected in the price – which is so much less that you should be willing to accept such compromise.
Also consider
Pocket-lint
Garmin Instinct Solar
Garmin’s outdoor watch that sits underneath the pricier Fenix does still cost considerably more than the T-Rex Pro, but will give you those navigation features and great long battery life too.
Read our review
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Pocket-lint
Polar Grit X
The Grit X will give you navigation features, a light design, and help you fuel for long runs and hikes to make sure you’re not running on empty.
Apple has begun rolling out iOS and iPadOS 14.5. The latest software update includes the new App Tracking Transparency feature, which lets users decide whether to allow apps to track their activity “across other companies’ apps and websites” for advertising purposes. A pop-up will now appear whenever apps are designed to share your activity in this way. Facebook has heavily criticized Apple over App Tracking Transparency, claiming that it presents “a false tradeoff between personalized ads and privacy.” The new option could have a detrimental impact on Facebook’s ad business.
Perhaps more important to day-to-day iPhone usage, iOS 14.5 also includes a very helpful and timely new trick: if you own an Apple Watch, you can set your iPhone to automatically unlock without requiring a Face ID match or passcode as long as Apple’s smartwatch is on your wrist. This is designed to make getting into your phone that much quicker while we’re all still wearing face masks so frequently throughout the day. Installing watchOS 7.4 is necessary for this feature to work; that update is also available as of today.
iOS and iPadOS 14.5 include a ton of new emoji with a focus on inclusivity. The update adds the ability to watch Apple Fitness Plus workouts on a TV with AirPlay 2. Apple’s Podcasts app is getting a new design and optional subscriptions. The latest video game controllers for the PS5 and Xbox Series X / S are now supported on the iPhone and iPad as of this update. And all iPhone 12 models will allow for 5G connectivity in dual-SIM mode in more countries. Starting with the 14.5 update, Apple will no longer default to a female-sounding voice for its Siri assistant. Instead, you’ll be prompted to choose your preferred voice during device setup. Apple has a post up with all of the miscellaneous improvements and additions.
iOS and iPadOS 14.5 is rolling out to iPhone and iPad users now; you can check the “software update” section in settings to begin the update process right away.
Update April 22nd, 1:12PM ET: Updated the first paragraph to reflect that Garmin wouldn’t disclose how long its introductory price of $319.99 will last.
Garmin has upgraded its premium Venu smartwatch for 2021 (via DC Rainmakerand Ars Technica). It now comes in two sizes instead of a single 43mm-sized model. The 45mm Venu 2 houses a 1.3-inch 416 x 416 OLED screen. For smaller wrists (or those who just prefer a less wrist-dominating device), the 40mm Venu 2S has a 1.1-inch 360 x 360 OLED screen. Both watches have an optional always-on mode, and they are available now for an introductory cost of $319.99, which is $80 cheaper than the original Venu when it launched in late 2019. Garmin hasn’t shared how long this price will be in effect (the product pages mention a $399.99 asking price), and the company declined to disclose how long this lower price will last.
Other than the differences in case sizes, there isn’t much else distinguishing the Venu 2 lineup visually from the predecessor. They’re slick-looking touchscreen wearables with Gorilla Glass 3-covered touchscreens that feature two buttons. One of the biggest gen-to-gen improvements is its battery performance. The original Venu could last five days in smartwatch mode, but Garmin’s bigger 45mm Venu 2 watch doubles it (and then some) to a claim of 11 days of operation if you’re just using it for getting phone notifications with light usage otherwise. If you’re using its built-in GPS and streaming music from the watch to your headphones via Bluetooth, Garmin predicts up to eight hours of battery life, up from six in the previous model.
A close-up of the larger Venu 2.Garmin
Surprisingly, the smaller 40mm Venu 2S also has better battery life than the original, with 10 days of use expected in smartwatch mode or up to seven hours in GPS mode with music. Garmin has a whole page that backs up how it makes predictions on battery life, telling you what to expect depending on the kind of activities you’re doing. Garmin is also touting faster recharging for both models, with 10 minutes of charging giving you up to one day of use in smartwatch mode or an hour of GPS usage with music. Both models can store up to 650 songs from Spotify, Amazon Music, or Deezer, up from 500 in the Venu and the 2020 Venu Sq.
The Venu 2 watches are packed with sensors, featuring a heart rate sensor, GPS (GLONASS and Galileo), a wrist-based pulse ox sensor to measure blood oxygen, a barometric altimeter for altitude, compass, gyroscope, accelerometer, thermometer, and an ambient light sensor. Each watch also features NFC for the Garmin Pay contactless payment feature. These watches work with iOS and Android, but only on Android can you respond to text messages.
In terms of new software features coming to the watches, Garmin’s Sleep Score will give you an aggregate score based on tracking your sleep stages, heart rate, stress, respiration, and your blood oxygen levels. The Venu 2 series can estimate your “Fitness Age” based on your level of activity and can guide you through high-intensity interval training (HIIT) and advanced strength training.
(Pocket-lint) – The original Garmin Venu was Garmin’s stab at something more like a smartwatch. It was designed to address the display above all things, sporting an AMOLED screen – and looking better than all the other devices in Garmin’s range.
That’s true of the Venu 2 too and we’ve had one on the wrist for a couple of days to bring you some first impressions.
Design and build
40 and 45mm sizes
45.4 x 45.4 x 12.2mm, 49g
Changeable straps
Stainless steel bezel
Glance at the Venu 2 and you might not know if you’re looking at a new watch or the old model. The overall design is pretty much that same – and it’s a safe design.
Pocket-lint
The watch case sticks to polymer, topped with a stainless steel bezel to give a premium look around the display. The big change is that there’s now two sizes – 40 or 45mm – so there’s a Venu 2 for every wrist.
That also sees a change in the straps you can attach to it, with 18mm and 22mm supported respectively, allowing you to chop and change to get the look you want.
As we said of the original Venu, the design is rather safe. It doesn’t quite reach to the premium looks that you get from the Apple Watch, but it’s conventional enough. We suspect much comes from the close relationship to the Vivoactive – with the Vivoactive 4 also coming in the same sizes.
There’s a difference, however. The case of the Venu 2 now appears to be one piece, whereas previous models had a separate backplate and body, not that that makes a huge difference. For those who like to examine sensors, there’s also a new arrangement to the Elevate heart rate sensor on the back, which we’ve not seen in other Garmin devices.
Pocket-lint
There are two buttons on the right-hand side of the body and these are oblong rather than the round buttons usually found on the Forerunner models.
Display
AMOLED, 33mm
416 x 416 pixels
Touchscreen
Always-on option
We don’t have the exact figures on for the display at the time of writing, but on the 45mm model, it’s about 33mm in diameter for the visible area (the same as the Vivoactive 4).
There’s some bezel area under the glass that’s not active display, but Garmin has now added some markers on this area which help to disguise the fact that not the entire area is display. Fortunately, because this is AMOLED, the deep black of the display and that surrounding area merge together so you really don’t notice it – or we haven’t so far.
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There are plenty of watch faces on the device and many more available through Connect IQ, but we were quickly taken by the Matrix-style face.
There are three brightness levels and it doesn’t appear that there’s any sort of ambient light sensor to adjust the levels automatically. If you choose the top brightness you’ll get a warning that this will drain the battery faster – and it’s the display that’s likely to eat most of the battery life on your Garmin.
It’s a touchscreen display, allowing some interaction, while other functions will need the press of one of the two body buttons.
There’s a battery saving mode that will take you to a simple watch face to save power and also drop the brightness – again underlining the point that this display does have a hit on this watch’s endurance.
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Of course, that’s something we really need to examine in more depth over the coming weeks. Garmin says you’ll get 11 days in battery saver mode, while 10 minutes charging will give 1 day of life – but we’ll be fully testing the realistic battery life. So far it looks like it will be good for 5 days based on wearing it so far.
There is the option for the screen to be always-on, but you’d have to select that. The default is to have the display fade to black fairly quickly, but to waken when you twist it to look at it.
Sensors and hardware
HR, GPS, ABC
Pulse Ox
Despite pitching this watch as a smartwatch, the Venu 2 is loaded with all the sensors to feed Garmin’s data machine. That will keep track of your activities from your steps to your HIIT workouts, and give you loads of information about what happened.
The mainstay is the heart rate sensor, which can keep track of your heart rate through the day and night to give you a complete picture of what’s happening within your body. It will help you get in the zone when you’re working out, it will help spot when you’re stressed and it will also measure blood oxygen levels – although be warned that this demands a lot of battery life, so probably isn’t worth the sacrifice.
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GPS provides your location for accurate route tracing, so you know how far and how fast you went, for tracking all your outdoor activities. The accelerometer will detect motion, like steps or sleep movements, the barometer can detect altitude change while the compass can sense which direction you’re moving in.
All the data collected feeds a number of systems, like Body Battery which pitches your sleep against your daily activity to advise you about how well rested you are, while also giving you full breakdowns of your activity in the Garmin Connect smartphone app, so you know what you did and what benefit that will have.
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New in this device are sleep scores and insights from Firstbeat Analytics as well as fitness age, which draws in a lot of information to estimate your age – or the impact that your lifestyle might have had on your body and make suggestions so you can do something about it.
They support a full selection of sports, but we’ve not had the chance to test them yet as we’ve only just strapped this watch on. There’s wider support for HIIT workouts and strength training – two areas that Garmin hasn’t been so great on in the past.
We’ll be testing all the functions in the coming weeks.
Smartwatch features
Custom graphics
Garmin Pay
Music support
Smartphone notifications
Garmin offers a range of features are less sporty and more smartwatchy. These aren’t new or unique to the Venu 2, indeed most have been refined across top Forerunner and Fenix models over the years.
But these do complete the picture and ensure that you’re not missing out on essentials. There’s support for downloaded music from Spotify, Deezer or Amazon Music, letting you sync up to 650 tracks, an increase over the previous Venu model.
That means you can arrange playlists and have them sync to your watch, so you can listen to music phone-free via Bluetooth headphones. You can also control music you might have on your phone.
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Garmin Pay allows for mobile payments, so you can pay for that coffee on your way home from a long run – although there’s not a wide range of support for banks outside the US – so it’s worth checking to see if you’ll be able to use your card.
We’ve mentioned Garmin Connect a couple of times already and once setup on your phone, you’ll be able to control notifications on your watch so you can stay informed – and those using an Android phone will be able to use Quick Replies to reply to messages too.
Best Garmin watch 2021: Fenix, Forerunner and Vivo compared
By Chris Hall
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Much of this will be familiar to Garmin users, but the Venu 2 does use some custom graphics and animations that are a little more exciting that you’ll find elsewhere. That makes better use of the display and while we’ve not had a chance to fully explore everything, we’ve already spotted some areas where the Venu 2 looks better than some other Garmin devices.
First Impressions
The Garmin Venu 2 is all about that display. For those who are turned off by the slightly muted displays you might find on the Vivoactive or Forerunner devices, the Venu is designed to deliver.
First impressions are great, with vibrancy and plenty of colour, giving the custom visuals a lift. That was true of the previous device too, so we’ll be looking at how this performs as a fitness device and a lifestyle device over the coming weeks.
They work super well, and they’re one more thing keeping you on the iPhone
I was starting to get really worried that I wouldn’t find my friend.
For this first look at AirTags, I sent Vjeran Pavic off into an unfamiliar city with a single Apple AirTag and no phone, no smartwatch, or any other mode of communication. The challenge was to see if Apple’s Find My system for locating AirTags would be able to lead me to him.
Apple AirTags weren’t designed for an elaborate game of hide-and-seek. They can help you locate anything they’re attached to; most of the time you’ll be listening for their little chirps as you hunt down the keys you inexplicably left sitting on top of the fridge instead of on the hook where they belong. For that purpose they work incredibly well, right on down to a little arrow on the iPhone’s screen pointing in the direction and little haptic taps as encouragement that you’re getting warmer.
But this exercise was a very good stress test for the new $29 iPhone accessory ($99 for a four pack), because it meant that the only chance I had of tracking Vjeran down is if one of the near-billion Find My-enabled devices on the planet happened to pick up the AirTag’s Bluetooth signal and send it back to me.
After a half-hour of walking around, I finally found him. He was standing on a street corner with no foot traffic whatsoever, which meant that the intermittent signals I got detailing his location came from a couple of iPhones in cars that were driving by.
That’s impressive.
AirTags have been rumored for years but never seemed to materialize. They’re really here now and though I wouldn’t go so far as to say they’re worth the wait, I do think Apple has put together a thoughtfully designed system that goes a long way toward ensuring privacy and safety while still making it easier for you to locate your stuff.
AirTags are a very Apple-y Apple product, and that ends up being great but also just a little annoying (and, for third-party companies like Tile, troubling).
AirTags
The basics of AirTags are simple enough to understand: each one is a tiny little puck with a Bluetooth Low Energy radio and a U1 ultra-wideband (UWB) chip. You pair it with your iPhone just like you do with AirPods, holding it nearby and then tapping through a short setup process. After that, they’re available in a new “Items” tab in the Find My app.
From the app, you can set the AirTags to chirp, mark them as lost (which enables some different features), or just tap the button that lets you locate them in space. If you have an iPhone with UWB, it can locate the AirTag in physical space and point a little arrow at it when you get within four feet or so. It all works very well and is very satisfying.
From a design perspective, an AirTag is classic Apple. It’s a white and shiny silver little button, and you can have custom emoji or letters printed on the plastic. They are as cute as the buttons they resemble.
However, you’ll soon find the plastic is scuffed and the chrome on the back is scratched. Sincerely, do not expect these to stay looking pristine for long — not since the weird early days of the iPod nano has an Apple product gotten scuffed this easily.
One clever touch is that the plastic body itself serves as the speaker. It’s what vibrates to make the chirping noise. It gets plenty loud, though my old ears had a bit of a difficult time using just that sound to locate one. Also, if for whatever reason the AirTag is squeezed or compressed, that will dampen how loud it can get.
There’s also no hole on them for a lanyard loop. If you want to actually attach one to anything instead of dropping it in a pocket, you’ll need to buy an accessory. That, increasingly, also feels like a classic Apple move.
The one un-Apple part of the design is that the battery is actually user-replaceable. A little twist of the bottom reveals a standard CR2032 cell, which Apple claims should be good for a year of battery life.
The real trick — and the hidden complexity — arises when you are tracking an AirTag out in the world, when something is truly lost. Like everything in Apple’s Find My network, the AirTag’s location is end-to-end encrypted so only you can see its location. But any iOS device can send that location to you.
If somebody comes upon a lost AirTag, they can tap it via NFC to see information about it, including its serial number (which could be important if you think it’s being used to track you). If the owner has put it in “Lost Mode,” they have the option to have that information page show their phone number and a brief message so you can contact them. This NFC feature works equally well with iPhones and Android devices.
That means all it takes to locate an AirTag is for any iPhone with Bluetooth on to see it — even if that iPhone is whizzing by in a car. Apple is leveraging its huge network of devices as a competitive advantage here — along with the competitive advantage of directly offering this functionality as a system-level feature. Tile has asked Congress to look into that.
The pairing process for AirTags is just like pairing AirPods.
A Bluetooth device broadcasting anything is a potential privacy risk, so Apple is cycling each AirTag’s Bluetooth identifier “frequently.” More than that, though, Apple has also done some work to develop a system that also considers personal safety.
If the Find My network notices that an AirTag has been separated from its owner for a while and seems to be in the same place you are, it will alert you. If you’re an iPhone user, you’ll see a notification that says “AirTag Found Moving With You.”
A bunch of AirTags.
Apple says that there are options to disable these “Safety Alerts” if you are “borrowing” something. But the real purpose is clear: to protect you from somebody using an AirTag to surreptitiously track you.
When you see the alert, you can tap the notification to get a screen that will allow you to make the AirTag start beeping. The alert will also instruct you on how to disable the AirTag by removing the battery.
Finally, Apple says, “If you feel your safety is at risk, contact your local law enforcement who can work with Apple. You might need to provide the AirTag or its serial number.” Apple won’t be able to provide your location, but it could provide governments with information related to the person who registered the AirTag as theirs in the first place.
If you’re an Android user, well, virtually none of this is going to work for you. However, the AirTag does have at least one potential trick. If it’s been separated from its owner and then detects that it’s suddenly on the move, it will start beeping.
All in all, I think it’s a thoughtfully designed system, but it’s also definitely one that leverages Apple’s strengths.
An AirTag.
Really, the AirTag is the Most Apple Product I’ve seen in a while. It’s just a little more expensive than the competition. It’s beautifully designed, but its hardware still somehow fails to actually take the practical realities of our dirty, messy world into account. It’s very privacy-focused. It really only works with Apple devices. It offers features that no third-party device can really match thanks to Apple’s tight integration (or tight grip on its APIs, depending on your point of view). And since there’s no Android version of Find My, it’s another piece of the Apple ecosystem that’s going to keep you from switching.
An AirTag is a very Apple-y thing for Apple users who already live in Apple’s ecosystem. They work great — and will be great at keeping you in Apple’s world.
(Pocket-lint) – The Xiaomi Mi Watch Lite joins the Mi Watch as a part of a duo that wants to put smarts on your wrist for significantly less money than an Apple Watch or a Samsung smartwatch.
If the Mi Watch is considered affordable, then the Mi Watch Lite is proper cheap, going toe-to-toe with a raft of Amazfit Bip watches available around this price – and other budget options you should probably steer clear of.
For that cut price, the Mi Watch Lite offers a mix of smartwatch and fitness tracking features and battery life that can make it through a week. You’ll inevitably have to live with some shortcomings, but it feels like ones that don’t detract from what is a decent budget smartwatch.
Design & Display
Measures: 41 x 35 x 11.9mm / Weighs: 35g
1.39-inch display, 320 x 320 resolution
Size options: 41mm
5ATM waterproof
Like the first Mi Watch – the one that never made it out of China – the Mi Watch Lite is a square affair, featuring a 41mm case made from plastic.
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It weighs in at 35g, so it’s by no means a heavy watch, and it’s paired up with a TPU strap that’s removable. It just takes a bit of time to get it off and get something else on there.
There’s your pick of black, ivory or navy blue case colours, or the choice of five ‘fashionable’ Morandi colours including olive, pink and ivory.
On the wrist, the Mi Watch Lite doesn’t look hugely different from other budget square smartwatches out there and the colour options are nice – but it would be stretch to say it gives them a more stylish look. It’s pleasant enough looking, but the larger Xiaomi Mi Watch is visually more appealing.
The Lite offers a single physical button on the side of the case that’ll wake the screen up and launch the app menu screen. That screen is the touchscreen kind of course. It’s a 1.4-inch TFT LCD type, so not the AMOLED kind you get on the more expensive Mi Watch.
It’s a good quality screen for the price and certainly doesn’t have that washed-out look you sometimes find on smartwatches this cheap. The backlight offers 350 nits of brightness, so it’s not one you’re going to struggle to see at night or during the day. It still offers good colours and it’s generally a nice screen to glance down at.
What’s more problematic is the controls: tapping is prioritised over swiping through screens. You can scroll through some screens, but it’s slow moving when you do it. It’s generally less of a problem if you’re checking a notification or looking at one of the widgets, but when the sweat comes during exercise, it’s more problematic and frustrating to handle.
Like the round Mi Watch, Xiaomi has made the Lite suitable for swimming and showering by slapping it with a 5ATM water resistance rating, which means it’s good at depths up to 50 metres.
Software & Performance
Works with Android and iOS
No third-party app support
Xiaomi uses its own in-house operating system for the on-watch software experience and it has Xiaomi Wear (Android) and Xiaomi Wear Lite (Apple) apps for that time spent away from the watch itself.
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Our screen control frustrations aside, it’s a very easy watch software to get to grips with. Swipe left and right to see widgets showing off data like heart rate and weather forecasts. The main menu screen is a mere button press away.
Like the Mi Watch, that main menu screen doesn’t include any text, so it’s up to you to quickly establish what launches what here. There’s some simple settings you can tinker with on the watch like screen brightness, watch faces, do not disturb mode, idle alerts, and setting up a password for security.
The companion Xiaomi Wear app is broken up into three sections letting you dig into your health and fitness stats, track workouts from and adjust settings. There’s no third-party app support here, so if you’re thinking of connecting it to the likes of Apple Health or Google Fit, you’re out of luck.
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The app itself – much like Zepp Health’s Amazfit and Mobvoi’s TicWatch – doesn’t feel the most polished or slick, but it does make it easy to adjust watch settings and delve deeper into your data if you want.
Sports & Fitness Tracking
GPS and GLONASS
Built-in heart rate monitor
24/7 fitness tracking and sleep monitoring
Like the Mi Watch, the Lite is one that’s built to track your fitness and health – and has the key sensors on board to deliver that.
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There’s built-in GPS and GLONASS satellite support to map outdoor activities. There’s accelerometer and gyroscope motion sensors for indoor tracking. And there’s 11 sports modes in total, including running (indoors and outdoor), cycling, trekking, swimming (pool and open water) and freestyle modes for those activities it doesn’t cover.
What you’re missing out from the Mi Watch are the Firstbeat-powered training features, stress tracking, the ability to take blood oxygen measurements, automatic exercise recognitio, and wider satellite support.
As a stripped-back sports and health monitoring watch, the Lite performs pretty well. GPS accuracy during our testing was reliable in comparison to a Garmin running watch. For indoor workouts, heart rate data was usually closely in-line with a chest strap monitor for HIIT and indoor rowing sessions – although we didn’t have to raise the intensity too high outside to see some odd spikes in heart rate.
If you’re less concerned about smashing out burpees and nailing 5K PBs, the Lite’s core fitness tracker features work well without really offering ways to make improvements or motivate you to move more.
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Step counts during our testing were within acceptable range of the Fitbit Sense, and it’ll capture distance covered and calories burned. It offered similar accuracy to the bigger Mi Watch for sleep monitoring, though doesn’t capture REM sleep stages or offer any kind of insight or advice to improve sleep.
If you choose to continuously monitor your heart rate, then based on our experience, resting and average heart rate data seemed high compared to the data captured on a chest strap and a heart rate monitoring pulse oximeter. While there’s no stress monitoring here, you do still get guided breathing exercises, though there’s nothing groundbreaking on that front in terms of how it’s delivered.
Smartwatch Features
Over 120 watch faces
View notifications
Music controls
For this low price you’re obviously not going to get an Apple Watch equivalent here, so you won’t be able to make payments, put music on it, or even download apps.
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What you can do is view notifications from a paired Android or iPhone, control music playing on your phone from native and third-party apps, check weather forecasts and set alarms.
Notifications can only be displayed and not acted on and some messages can look a little messy at times in the manner they’re displayed. Music playback controls work well and dedicated screens to show-off weather data work without issue, so there’s definitely some nice elements here.
You do get a nice array of watch faces too, with the ability to store multiple faces on the watch itself and download more from the watch store, which you can find in the companion app. There’s a good mix of analogue and digital faces and additional ones if you want to pack it with data or keep things simple.
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That’s really your lot though. Aside from some timer and alarm features, Xiaomi keeps it basic, which some will be satisfied with and others possibly not so much.
Battery Life
Up to 9 days in typical use
10 hours GPS battery life
The Mi Watch Lite comes packing a 230mAh capacity battery, which Xiaomi says will get you up to 9 days in typical use. That typical use is based on lab tests where heart rate monitoring was set to be the biggest interval option, 100 notifications were received by the watch, and it tracked one 35-minute outdoor exercise session a week.
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The likelihood is that most people are probably going to be working out more than once a week or wanting to monitor heart rate with more detail. Our testing time didn’t reflect Xiaomi’s lab testing conditions. We had continuous heart rate monitoring on at 5 minute intervals, had notifications turned on and tracked five outdoor and indoor workouts a week. It ended up lasting about 5 days in our testing time, which is short by 4 days of that claimed 9 days life per charge.
Those GPS battery life numbers seem to add up as well, offering the kind of drop off in 30 minute and 1 hour outdoor runs that suggest it could reach to those 10 hours when you want that hit of mapping data.
Best fitness trackers 2021: Top activity bands to buy today
By Britta O’Boyle
·
Our guide to the top fitness trackers available, helping you count steps, track calories, monitor your heart rate, sleep patterns and more.
When it comes to charging, there’s a large cradle that clips around the back of the watch and you’ll have no concerns it’s going to budge or fall out when it’s charging. It’s pretty well locked in place.
Verdict
The Xiaomi Watch Lite is a cheap smartwatch that is surprisingly nice to live with once you accept the compromises you have to make with it.
You’re not going to get that same high-quality display or some of the richer health and fitness features and insights you’ll get on the Mi Watch, but what remains offers a familiar and good experience.
It’s a solid albeit basic fitness tracker, competent smartwatch, and doesn’t do too badly as a budget sportswatch all considered. Compared to smartwatches in and around it at this price, the Mi Watch Lite stands out for the right reasons.
Also consider
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Amazfit GTS 2
If you can stretch to spend more, the GTS 2 will get you a more impressive hardware and richer fitness tracking and smartwatch features.
OnePlus has announced that it plans to bring new features, like an always-on display mode, a 12-hour watchface, and more to its new smartwatch with future software updates. The news came with the announcement of the Watch’s first software update after its release, which OnePlus says it’s starting to roll out. This release aims to fix the issues we experienced with heart rate and activity tracking, among other bugs.
The lack of an always-on display was one of the ways we found the Watch to be lacking when we reviewed it, so it’s a standout feature among the planned updates. While that feature alone won’t make the device a great smartwatch, it will at least make it more useful as a timepiece. However, it will be interesting to see how always having the screen on affects the Watch’s almost two-week-long battery life.
Some of the other planned improvements include giving the user the ability to control their Android phone’s camera, new languages, and enabling of all the workout modes (OnePlus says it will have 110-plus, it currently has just over a dozen) and the AI watch face. OnePlus doesn’t provide a time frame as to when these updates will come out. But when they do, they’re sure to be a tad more exciting than the current update, which appears to mostly fix some of the larger bugs rather than add new features.
Fitbit may be ready to launch a new fitness tracker soon, if images published by WinFuture are to be believed. The new tracker is apparently named Luxe and features a more fashion-centric design than Fitbit’s existing Inspire 2. It’s not clear when the Luxe will be released or how much it will cost, but I would not be surprised if it has a higher price tag than the $100 Inspire 2.
The big upgrade for the Luxe is a new stainless steel body, which will be available in silver, gold, or black finishes. It also has a color OLED touchscreen, though WinFuture didn’t provide specs or detailed information about it. Both the stainless steel body and the color screen are upgrades over the plastic and monochrome options on the Inspire 2.
The Luxe is expected to have a heart rate monitor, sleep tracking, and all of the activity tracking features that Fitbit’s other wearables support. It’s not likely to have a GPS radio of its own, however — you’ll probably need to have your phone with you for accurate mapping of your runs. In addition to the body colors, WinFuture’s images show various strap color options, so it’s likely Fitbit will position this as much of a fashion accessory as a fitness device.
Fitbit, which is now owned by Google, built its brand on wrist-worn fitness trackers, and it looks like the Luxe is very much in that vein. The company has had less success producing a competent smartwatch, but perhaps it can inject some life into Google’s flailing smartwatch platform once the companies fully merge their resources.
Okay. Peloton sells a very famous stationary bicycle with streaming workouts, an app, and a whole fitness lifestyle situation.
Apple sells a very famous smartwatch with heart rate tracking, apps, and the ability to sync with fitness equipment over a proprietary Apple system called GymKit.
The basic Peloton bike costs $1,895 and does not work with GymKit; the fancier Bike Plus, which works with GymKit, costs $2,495.
A lot of people bought the more expensive bike to use it with their Apple Watches over GymKit! And yesterday all those people were dismayed to learn that Peloton had disabled Apple Watch integration for “bike bootcamp” classes, which combine cycling with strength training. (The integration still works just fine with regular old cycling, but you understand, again, that Peloton is an entire fitness lifestyle situation.)
Peloton’s statement yesterday firmly pinned the blame for this on Apple, with a spokesperson telling The Verge that “Peloton is committed to bringing the GymKit integration to all workouts and disciplines within Apple’s terms of service.” (emphasis ours).
This predictably led to a lot of confusion. Since Apple’s terms of service for GymKit are not public, it was not clear what terms Peloton had violated, and, in general, “using your expensive smartwatch to sync your heart rate to your expensive stationary bike” is not the sort of thing that should require contract negotiations between huge companies. And obviously Apple runs Apple Fitness Plus, which is a direct competitor to Peloton, and does not suffer from any corporate politics-based heart rate tracking issues. (And, of course, Peloton just bought Atlas, which is… a smartwatch company.)
Anyhow, irritating the huge group of wealthy people who own both an Apple Watch and a Peloton Bike Plus is a bad idea, so Peloton has a new statement today clarifying what’s going on. Here it is:
Apple GymKit is designed to work with equipment-based cardio workouts. However, Peloton recently implemented GymKit with Bike Bootcamp, a multi-disciplinary class type that combines strength and cardio, which the feature does not support. Members can still use GymKit to sync their cycling-only workouts to their Apple Watch from the Bike+.
So basically, the Apple Watch does not support switching from biking to lifting weights all in one workout. Fair enough. That said, if people want to use their Apple Watch in goofy off-label ways, it’s weird that Apple is stopping them in this way, no? And certainly adding a “bike bootcamp” workout mode to the Apple Watch fitness app would be relatively easy for Apple, the company that makes the Apple Watch.
In conclusion, Apple retains iron-fisted control over its devices and the things that connect to them through its secret accessory contracts, and if anyone would like to send me those contracts, our Securedrop is working again.
If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.
What makes a smartwatch “smart”? Is it the ability to show you notifications from your phone? What about the ability to track your physical activity and wellness, such as step counts, workouts, and sleep? How about providing you information about your day, such as the weather and upcoming calendar events? Or perhaps it’s the inclusion of a voice assistant on your wrist that you can ask to do things without having to use your phone?
Those are the questions I’ve been asking over the past week-plus as I’ve been testing the new OnePlus Watch, a $159 smartwatch and the first wearable from the smartphone company. The OnePlus Watch has all the looks of a modern smartwatch, but as I’ve learned wearing it on my wrist day and night, it doesn’t have all the smarts.
The OnePlus Watch is not like a Wear OS smartwatch, such as those made by Fossil, Motorola, or Mobvoi. Nor is it like a Samsung Galaxy Watch or an Apple Watch. All of those have software platforms that integrate with other apps and services, so you can download apps or watchfaces to the watch itself, just like you might with a phone. That makes them very extensible and customizable — you can easily make the watch look unique and do the things you need it to.
The OnePlus Watch, on the other hand (or wrist?), runs its own proprietary software, based on a real-time operating system. This software is very quick and power efficient, but it is not extensible — there’s no app store or third-party watchfaces to download on the OnePlus Watch. It’s similar to the software on the budget smartwatches you can get on Amazon; if you’ve ever used an Amazfit, Umidigi, or Wyze watch, you’ve used a real-time operating system. The OnePlus Watch is not very different from those in this respect.
This choice of platform affords the OnePlus Watch its greatest strength, long battery life, and also its greatest weakness: it just doesn’t do all that much compared to other smartwatches you can buy.
The OnePlus Watch looks like many other smartwatches, but most especially the Samsung Galaxy Watch Active.
OnePlus Watch software
The OnePlus Watch pairs with and is controlled by the OnePlus Health app for Android — there’s no iPhone compatibility at all. But you don’t need to own a OnePlus phone, it works with basically any modern Android device. I tested it on both OnePlus and Samsung smartphones and the experience was the same.
The app is where you can see what health and fitness metrics the watch has recorded, adjust which apps send notifications on your wrist, and view the available watchfaces. OnePlus has about 50 watchfaces so far, with some offering limited customizability in the form of selectable shortcuts or widgets, such as a weather widget, date, or shortcut to a built-in app like the timer. You can choose up to 14 faces to store on the watch and switch between them without using your phone. The company says it plans on adding more in the future, but as I mentioned earlier, there are no options for third-party watchfaces or third-party app widgets like you get with Samsung, Wear OS, or Apple smartwatches.
The watchfaces themselves are what you’d expect: there is the assortment of analog and digital styles to choose from, with some showing more information about your activity than others. I’m not a big fan of the analog options, so I settled on a digital face. Unfortunately, there’s a bug where digital watchfaces on the OnePlus Watch are stuck in 24-hour time and can’t show 12-hour time. The company tells me it is aware of this bug, and it is slated to be fixed “this month.”
The OnePlus Watch’s interface mimics Wear OS and is easy to navigate.
The watch interface has a familiar layout: swipe down for settings, swipe up to see notifications, press the side button to see your apps. You can swipe right from the watchface to access basic widgets for music control, weather, and activity tracking, similar to Wear OS or a Samsung watch. The design of the interface all looks mostly fine, and there thankfully aren’t any stutters or lags when navigating it.
I do have a few gripes with how notifications are handled. You can’t clear notifications by just swiping them away, like you can with every other smartwatch. Instead, you have to tap into each one and then press clear or scroll to the bottom to clear them all. It’s a clumsy and fiddly process. The OnePlus Watch doesn’t always sync with the notifications I’ve cleared on my phone, either, and occasionally notifications for the same messages would get duplicated, forcing me to see the same alerts more than once.
You can’t do much with those notifications, either. There are no actions you can take other than clearing them from your wrist. OnePlus supports canned message replies in just five apps: WhatsApp, Telegram, Line, Discord, and Facebook Messenger. Notably and frustratingly, that list doesn’t include standard SMS messages. On top of that, there are only four basic replies to choose from: “OK”; “Be right there!”; “In a meeting, contact you later”; and “I’m driving, contact you later.” I frequently use a smartwatch to triage notifications, delete incoming emails, or reply to messages when I’m away from my desk, but I can’t do most of those things with the OnePlus Watch.
The OnePlus Watch comes with a basic set of apps: weather, timer, stopwatch, alarm, workout, sleep tracking, etc. Oddly, it doesn’t have a calculator or a calendar app, so I can’t easily see my next meeting or appointment, something I do a lot with other smartwatches. There’s no way to get your next appointment on your watchface, either. And since there isn’t an app store, I can’t add any apps to that list.
You can forget about streaming music from Spotify or playing podcasts through your favorite app — the only thing you can do with the OnePlus Watch is control what’s playing on your phone or transfer MP3 files from your phone to the watch’s 4GB of storage. Want to track your runs with Strava or MapMyFitness instead of OnePlus’ app? Sorry, no dice. If you want to control smart home devices from your wrist, the OnePlus Watch is entirely useless unless you have a OnePlus TV, where you can use it as a remote. The OnePlus TV is only available in India.
The OnePlus Watch also lacks a voice assistant. I can’t ask it to start a timer when I’m in the kitchen and my hands are dirty, I can’t ask it to turn the lights off or open my garage door, and I can’t dictate a reply to an incoming message. How well voice assistants work varies greatly between smartwatches (Siri on the Apple Watch, pretty good! Bixby on a Samsung watch, less so), but OnePlus isn’t even trying here and I’ve missed having one available.
Lastly, even though the OnePlus Watch has an NFC radio, it does not support mobile payments. You can’t tap your wrist to pay for something like you can with an Apple Watch, Samsung watch, or Wear OS smartwatch.
The OnePlus Watch’s fitness tracking features hit the standard beats.Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
OnePlus Watch fitness tracking
The fitness tracking features are quite basic. It will track your steps throughout the day; the watch will nudge you to get up and move when you’ve been sitting for too long; you can choose between 14 different workouts for the watch to track; and if you wear the OnePlus Watch to bed, it will make an attempt to track your sleep.
I’m not a gym rat, but I did wear the OnePlus Watch on my left wrist with a Fitbit Inspire HR on my right wrist throughout this review and the OnePlus counted thousands fewer steps than the Fitbit every day. None of these devices are perfect with their step tracking, but that kind of discrepancy is going to make tracking a longer-distance run or other intense workout inaccurate or just plain hard to do. I asked a few other reviewers I know who are also testing the OnePlus Watch and each one has had the same issues with inaccurate step counting. OnePlus says a bug fix for GPS optimization and to add more workout modes will be available sometime in mid-April.
While the OnePlus Watch frequently undercounted my steps, it overestimated how much I slept each night.
Sleep tracking, oddly enough, has the opposite problem. The OnePlus Watch consistently overestimates how long I slept each night compared to the Fitbit and Google’s Nest Hub. A bug has also prevented the Watch from syncing its sleep data with the OnePlus Health app, even though other activity synced over fine. The company says this bug should also be fixed sometime this month.
As mentioned earlier, you can’t use other fitness apps on the OnePlus Watch. The OnePlus Health app provides syncing with the Google Fit platform, so it’s possible you could cobble together a syncing solution between other apps using Fit as glue, but I did not test this. In general, the OnePlus Watch’s fitness tracking is fine for basic activity trends, but any fitness enthusiasts will want something more capable and reliable.
The OnePlus Watch only comes in one size: a large 46mm face.
OnePlus Watch hardware and design
In terms of design, the OnePlus Watch is generic-looking — it reminds me a lot of Samsung’s Galaxy Watch Active line. It’s got a round face, there are two buttons on the side, and the body is made of polished stainless steel, which is nice to see at this price point. It comes in silver, black, or a gold-colored special edition — I’ve got the black model and it’s a little boring to look at. Either way, the hardware is solid and put together well — it’s not creaky or plasticky, and there are no rough edges to worry about.
OnePlus is only offering the watch in one size, 46mm, and frankly, it’s big. It’s bigger than I like watches to be on my wrist, and if you have smaller wrists than me you’re not going to have a fun time with this. On the plus side, it’s not the thickest smartwatch I’ve ever worn. Just one size band comes in the box — OnePlus says that customers who need a shorter band will be able to get one by contacting customer service.
The touchscreen is a 1.39-inch 454 x 454 OLED that’s easy to see both indoors and out. It’s colorful, like you’d expect an OLED to be, but there’s no always-on display option, which nearly every other smartwatch has now. That makes it that much more annoying to check the time, though the wrist turn gesture does work well to wake it up.
On the underside are the sensors for heart rate and blood oxygen. As usual, you should not use these sensors for medical purposes — and blood oxygen monitors on even the best smartwatches notoriously struggle with giving accurate readings. Inside the watch are the accelerometers and gyroscopes necessary to track your activity and workouts, plus GPS and Bluetooth radios. There’s no Wi-Fi or LTE here — if you leave your phone behind, you’re going to miss notifications and alerts until the watch is back in Bluetooth range of your phone.
Also missing from the OnePlus Watch are any rotating bezels or crowns — the only way to interact with it is to tap and swipe on the screen itself or push the buttons on the side.
Even though it doesn’t have a voice assistant, the OnePlus Watch does have a microphone and speaker, so you can answer calls from your wrist via Bluetooth. It worked fine in my tests; callers said I sounded clear to them, but the speaker on the watch is a bit crackly at full volume. It works in a pinch.
The OnePlus Watch has exceptional battery life and charges very quickly on its included charger.
The best thing about the OnePlus Watch is its battery life. OnePlus claims up to 14 days of usage between charges — it lasted about 10 days for me, wearing it day and night. Charging the watch is also quick and easy: just 20 minutes on the charger adds half a charge, which translates to literal days of usage. No Apple, Samsung, or Wear OS watch can last this long or charge this quickly.
But at the same time, the OnePlus Watch has such great battery life because, frankly, it just does less than those other smartwatches. The best comparison I can make is that the OnePlus Watch is a fitness tracker in a smartwatch body, which would be an acceptable premise if it were a better fitness tracker.
There are about 50 different watchfaces to choose from for the OnePlus Watch.
The OnePlus Watch may look like a lot of other smartwatches, but I can’t say it compares well to them. It’s limited in features, only comes in one size, and as I’ve gone over, there are several bugs with it that make it feel like an unfinished product. Aside from its long battery life, the OnePlus Watch’s bestselling point is its low price, which is half that of a Samsung Galaxy Watch 3 and over $100 less than the comparably sized Galaxy Watch Active 2. But if you’re looking for a smartwatch for your Android phone, it’s not that hard to find Wear OS models on sale, often for less than the cost of the OnePlus Watch.
For me, a good smartwatch is a lot like a personal assistant on my wrist. It tells me the time, when my next calendar appointment is, what the weather is like, and how active I’ve been throughout the day. I can quickly ask it to set a timer when I’m making a cup of tea or use it to reply to a message from my spouse when I’m running an errand. It also lets me customize its appearance and capabilities through third-party apps, watchfaces, or both. For others, it’s a way to track workouts and keep on top of their personal health.
In that framing, the OnePlus Watch isn’t really a smartwatch and based on my experience, it isn’t a great fitness tracker either. Instead, it’s just a clever watch, and it can be useful if your expectations of it are low. But if a smartwatch is going to take up real estate on my wrist, it has to be more useful than the OnePlus Watch.
(Pocket-lint) – After years of rumours, stop-and-start plans, and official teasers, OnePlus finally announced its first smartwatch. Unsurprisingly it’s called the OnePlus Watch.
The fact that it’s a round-screen device has surprised no one, but what perhaps came as unexpected is the fact that OnePlus opted not to use Google’s Wear OS platform.
Like other tech companies, namely Huawei and Samsung, OnePlus has opted to use its own software in order to improve battery life. That means up to 14 days between charges depending on usage. Check out our unboxing above for a more in-depth look.
Design
Measures: 46.4 × 46.4mm × 10.9mm
Weighs: 76g (including the strap)
IP68 water- and dust-resistant
Waterproof to 5ATM
The OnePlus Watch Classic editions are made from 316L stainless steel and finished with polished, rounded edges. It’s a simple and effective design and comes in two colours: Midnight Black (pictured) and Moonlight Silver.
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Midnight Black features a polished grey case with a black bezel around the watch’s completely round display. The glass on the front is mostly flat, but features shallow, subtle curves towards the edges.
As well as those two steel models, there’s also a limited edition Cobalt model which has a case made from a cobalt alloy and a gold metallic finish.
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Size-wise it’s quite a large watch, measuring 46mm across. That makes it similar in size to the Huawei Watch GT 2e and Watch GT 2 Pro.
For larger wrists the size isn’t a problem at all, especially if you’re used to wearing 44-47mm watches. However, those who need smaller sizes will likely be put off by how much it will dominate their wrist.
All of the OnePlus Watch options feature the same two-button design, where the top button features a raised OnePlus moniker. Both are slim buttons which don’t protrude too far from the side, meaning you’re unlikely to accidentally press them if your wrist is bent backward.
On the underside there’s the optical sensors required for measuring both heart-rate and blood oxygen saturation (SpO2). They’re all arranged neatly and sit just above the two contact points required for charging on its included cradle.
Unusually, this features a USB-A connector on the other side so you can’t plug it into the new Warp Charge adapter that ships with the OnePlus 9 phones.
The only other thing worth noting from a design perspective is the strap. It feels similar in material and design to Apple Watch’s basic Sport Band.
It’s a fluoroelastomer band, which is really flexible and features a metal pin that pokes through the holes to fix it in place, while the end inserts through a hole and underneath to tuck it out of the way.
We’ll have a full review in the near future, but on the features side OnePlus is promising a lot. It claims the Watch can last two weeks on a full charge and has the ability to track multiple sports and movements.
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It has GPS for location, gyroscope and accelerometer for movement, the aforementioned blood oxygen saturation and heart-rate tracking, plus a compass and barometric pressure. You can even use it for tracking swimming.
Add to that a Bluetooth speaker for receiving calls and storage for offline music playback and there’s a lot going for it. Especially given the price point.
Pocket-lint
First Impressions
The OnePlus Watch is simple but effective. It’s a round, polished watch that will survive being taken for a swim and should keep up with all of your fitness activities – whether you’re getting sweaty on a really hot day or you’re out on a wet and windy hike.
There are two big attractions: the price and the battery life. It’s more affordable than most other similar alternatives. And the fact you only need to charge it once every two weeks means you needn’t get battery anxiety.
If you’re looking your first smartwatch and don’t want to spend too much then the OnePlus Watch is a clear contender.
Also consider
Pocket-lint
Huawei Watch GT 2e
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Huawei’s Watch GT 2e is similar in a lot of ways. It offers similar tracking capabilites and design, plus it’s also affordable. Huawei has been in the fitness game longer than OnePlus too – and that experience will likely show.
Read our review
Writing by Cam Bunton. Editing by Mike Lowe.
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