OnePlus Watch 2 Uses Dual-Engine Architecture to Improve Battery Life

Following a first teaser last week, OnePlus shared more details about its new smartwatch, the OnePlus Watch 2 at Mobile World Congress today. Three years after the launch of the $159 OnePlus Watch, the OnePlus Watch 2 will be priced at $299, but it will be much more capable thanks to a new dual-engine architecture.

The original OnePlus Watch ran a limited OS that didn’t support third-party apps, and despite offering good battery life, it received poor reviews. With the OnePlus Watch 2, OnePlus is introducing a new hybrid experience with both Google’s Wear OS and the minimalistic RTOS running on the smartwatch. That’s thanks to a new dual-engine architecture with two separate chips, the Qualcomm Snapdragon W5 for running Wear OS, and the BES 2700 MCU powering the battery-friendly RTOS experience.

“This wouldn’t be possible without Google’s support, which made significant updates to Wear OS’ hybrid interface to support the new capabilities that run on the Dual-Engine Architecture,” the OnePlus team explained today. “Through this collaboration, the OnePlus Watch 2 transparently switches between the low power and high-performance engines to deliver a feature-rich, premium smartwatch experience with optimized battery life.”

Thanks to this dual-engine archicture and a 500mAh battery, OnePlus promises up to 100 hours of battery life in “Smart mode”, and up to 48 hours when using the watch for more intensive tasks. The watch can also be fully charged in just 60 minutes thanks to the company’s fast charging technology.

The OnePlus Watch 2 features a stainless steel chassis and a round watch face protected with sapphire crystal cover. The watch is also 5ATM and IP68 resistant, and it’s certified to the latest MIL-STD-810H US military standard, which means it should be quite durable.

The product page should go live later today, but the OnePlus Watch 2 starts at $299 and it will start shipping on March 4. It will be available in black steel and radiant steel colors, and you’ll also be able to configure it with 2GB RAM and 32GB of storage.