The Silicon-Citron Battery in OnePlus Smartwatches: Is It Really Worth The Money? Why OnePlus, Apple, and Android are taking a pound more seriously
The always-on display has been turned off so that the battery life can be Improved from 100 hours to 120 hours with regular use. The AOD shortens that by three days. That’s fairly typical for all flagship smartwatches these days. In a power-saving mode, you can get up to 16 days. OnePlus says it’s managed to stuff a larger 631mAh battery in the Watch 3 using the same silicon nanostack battery as the OnePlus 13. Since it runs Wear OS, it will add some extra mileage to the battery. I have been testing the watch for a while, but I still do not know the battery life or how fast the charging is. You can get a full day’s worth in 10 minutes.
The Apple Watch and Wear OS watches can last several weeks, but they have no access to the thousands of apps and smart functions that are available on fitness and watches from other brands. That’s what makes this $330 OnePlus smartwatch exciting.
This is possible because of the Silicon-carbon Battery technology inside the watch, which has been used by some companies for a long time. These batteries are denser, allowing them to carry a higher capacity without requiring a thicker battery. That’s why the OnePlus 13 can fit a big 6,000-mAh cell despite being thinner than the OnePlus 12, which has a 5,400-mAh cell. OnePlus calls this its Silicon NanoStack Battery, and so the OnePlus Watch 3 has a 631-mAh battery compared to its predecessor’s 500-mAh cell.
A lot of these updates are things other competitors already have. They just have a OnePlus twist to them, and it’ll take me some more time to really put subtler software tweaks through the testing gauntlet. The fact that the Watch 3 is a good reminder of how close this company has gotten to the top brands makes it worthwhile. The price increase for the Watch 3 has nothing to do with tariffs, according to Blank, who told me that I didn’t like the change.
That’s disappointing given some of the new health features. The big one is OnePlus’ 60S Health Check-In, where you touch the side button and get a quick scan of your heart rate, blood oxygen levels, mental wellness, wrist temperature, sleep quality, and vascular age. European users will get EKGs included in Q2 2025. The new test measures your arteriosclerosis. Oura has a similar feature that is meant to gauge your circulatory system’s overall state. (Mine is “normal.”)
I’ll forgive OnePlus this oversight now that there’s a proper rotating crown. It’s a shame you didn’t see it in the last watch, as it could be used to scroll through screens. There are delightful haptics that go along with it, and while this isn’t a groundbreaking addition, it soothes my inner curmudgeon that OnePlus has seen the errors of its ways and now upholds the nerdy wearable covenant that a rotating crown must also scroll.
Reporter on Wearables, Health and Wearable Optical devices for Gizmodo and PC Magazine – past, present and future
A senior reporter is focused on Wearables, health tech and more. She worked for both Gizmodo and PC Magazine.
