After I recently wrote about Oppo’s “oddly familiar” new smartwatch, Oppo got in touch with me to ask whether I’d be interested in checking it out for myself, even though it’ll only be available in China until later this year. The company representative suggested that I might find it less familiar in person, so I was interested to try it.
How did that work out? Well, it’s true that the Oppo Watch looks a little less derivative on my wrist than in press shots. But come on, there is no universe in which this product looks like this without the Apple Watch coming before it. From the strap design to the shape of the screen to the visual style of the OS, this is plainly a product that’s been made in Apple’s shadow.
That doesn’t necessarily…