Pete Lau confirms that the OnePlus Watch will not run Wear OS

Wear OS is not Google's most-loved platform, in our opinion. While Android and Android TV are now on version 11, Wear OS remains adrift on Android 9.0 Pie. Google has promised that it will upgrade Wear OS to Android 11 this year, although it has not committed to when that will be. There has been talk of OnePlus and Samsung joining the Wear OS platform, the former with the OnePlus Watch.

In December, Lau informed Input that OnePlus was working with Google to 'try to improve the connectivity between the Wear OS ecosystem' and the latter's other platforms. However, OnePlus CEO Pete Lau has confirmed that will not be the case.

Writing on the OnePlus Forums, Lau had this to say about the OS that the OnePlus Watch will run:

When developing the OnePlus Watch, we tried to understand the pain points for a smart watch wearer.

We chose to go with a smart wear operating system developed based on RTOS because we believe it provides you a smooth and reliable experience while offering a great battery life, covering some of the biggest concerns we've been hearing from people looking to buy a smartwatch.

In short, Wear OS is not smooth, stable or efficient enough for OnePlus to consider using it on its first smartwatch. The Snapdragon Wear 4100 platform has improved Wear OS in all those areas, as we discovered during our time with the TicWatch Pro 3. Unfortunately, Wear OS still lacks many features, including a native YouTube Music app or a working voice command to trigger the Google Assistant.

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