Low-cost smartwatches are now on the rise, and O+ wants to bank on the trend by releasing its own water-resistant Time wearable. Is it worth the Php1,995 price tag? Read on to find out.
O+ Time is a nice-looking, eye-catching smartwatch. The black and orange colors are well-balanced and it does remind you of designs from sports wearables, as we have mentioned before in our hands-on last December. To lock the device on your wrist, the company managed to equip a special kind of buckle tongue that pins to the adjustment holes, rather than locking itself on them like the ordinary ones do. It’s lightweight and comfortable to be worn on the wrist.
While it may be nice-looking, a common gripe one can encounter when using the device is its orientation when placed on your wrist. Add the fact that the buttons are placed at the bottom, it’s unconventional, and most of the times I find it hard to navigate through the phone’s 0.91-inch monochrome OLED screen when I wear it. There were also instances that the smartwatch fell off my wrist unexpectedly.
Speaking of the screen, it’s viewable from most angles, thanks to being placed deeper beyond the plastic shell. This gap between the two parts also causes the screen to have blurred reflections when viewed from the sides; nevertheless, it still manages to display legibly. It’s not advisable to use outdoors, as the sunlight will cover most of the screen with glare.
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To connect the smartwatch to your phone, O+ provided simple software to sideload to your Android phones (If you don’t know how to sideload, here’s a simple tutorial). The app is pretty straightforward, per se. There’s also a function for locating your watch if there is a need to. There were a few Chinese splash pages that greeted me as I opened the app for the first time — something that, I think, the company forgot to modify.
As for its connectivity, it’s generally a hit or miss. While notifications were transmitted at blazing speeds, calls made and received using the wearable were not that decent. The other party found the wearer to be choppy when we were having a conversation. The speaker can be praised for being loud enough to be heard outdoors, but the volume isn’t adjustable. The vibrations produced by incoming notifications were just okay, but it feels a bit strong at times.
While it connects and transmits notifications without any problems on pretty much any newly-released smartphones such as the LG G3 Stylus we reviewed last year and the LG G3 Beat, there are instances where it acts really weird and disconnects and connects back again a lot of times for no reason even when it’s as close as less than a foot to a smartphone such as MyPhone A888 Duo (running on Jellybean 4.1). It was never indicated in the manual, but it’s safe to assume that the wearable is working perfectly fine mostly for devices running on KitKat.
The Time’s other main features include a sleep monitor, a pedometer, a remote camera shutter, and access to your essential smartphone information when connected. We found accessing the phonebook and messages very handy especially in public places. The pedometer was not accurate in calculating our steps and definitely needs improvement. We find it odd that the watch’s own alarm function is tucked beneath the settings menu.
It may look small, but the 150mAh battery is something not to be underestimated with this wearable. The O+ Time was able to last up to one whole day with light to moderate notifications (with Bluetooth on and connected to my device). As for standby time, it can last between two to three days.
Overall, the O+ smartphone is a really decent wearable device for its Php1,995 low-cost price tag. For all the essential things you need, it can get all the job done. It has great connectivity (sans the calls), a really good and comfortable design, and an above-average battery life. The unconventional screen and some software issues both on the device and the accompanying software could do some working, though.
O+ Time specs:
0.91-Inch OLED Display
Notifications
Text Message Reader
Hands Free Call
Alarms and Alerts
Bluetooth 3.0 + HS
Pedometer
Accelerometer
Li-Ion 150mAh
57.4 x 22.4 x 13.1 mm, 30 g
What we liked about it:
*Comfortable, lightweight design
*Great battery life
*Connectivity isn’t a problem (sans the calls)
What we didn’t like:
*Screen produces a lot of glare outdoors
*Unconventional screen orientation when worn
*Alarms hidden inside settings
*Choppy handsfree calls
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