Smartwatch charging is a mess, with a totally different proprietary cable for each model. Lose your watch cable on a journey, and also you’re ready a week for an costly substitute or hoping a knock-off Amazon cable works. However, the health watch model COROS has discovered a distinctive solution to the dilemma of charging cable for watches.
When COROS launched its PACE Pro watch, it changed its typical three-pin cable with a tiny USB-C dongle; you insert a USB-C cable into it, then plug the dongle’s pins into your watch. This manner, you do not want to maintain a cellphone and watch charging cable available — simply slide the dongle onto your cellphone cable each couple of weeks when the battery dies.
That “A2” dongle was PACE Pro-exclusive, however this new “USB-C to COROS A1 Charging Adapter” works with the latest PACE 3 and a pair of, APEX 2 and a pair of Pro, and VERTIX 2S and a pair of. I additionally assume future COROS watches will match the A1 adapter, making it the common possibility.
This is nonetheless a “proprietary” charging solution, so that you’re screwed when you lose this tiny adapter; from expertise, it’s totally simple for folks to assume it is trash and toss it. Thankfully, COROS bundled it with a key ring holder so you may latch it onto a backpack and by no means lose monitor of it.
I’d love to see different health watch manufacturers emulate COROS’s strategy. Garmin, Polar, Amazfit, Suunto, Fitbit, and different health watch manufacturers every have distinctive connectors, in order that they’d every want their very own adapters. But I’d nonetheless favor a tiny, distinct adapter in order that I can maintain one other (extra helpful) USB-C cable plugged into my charging brick always.
I believe that we’ll ultimately see extra watches undertake the Qi2 wi-fi charging as a substitute, which might arguably be a fair higher “common” charging possibility. But COROS piggybacking on the USB-C normal is the subsequent smartest thing.
Why smartwatch charging is such a mess
A few years again, I requested Jitesh Ubrani, IDC’s analysis supervisor of worldwide system trackers, why smartwatch charging is such an unsolvable mess and whether or not the EU ought to step in for a common normal, simply as they pressured Apple to drop Lightning for USB-C.
He defined that “wearables are available in far too many sizes and styles” for a common normal to make sense.
If each watch had to use a Qi charging coil, for instance, it might “stifle innovation” and “do extra hurt than good,” notably to smaller manufacturers that design their watches to prioritize different perks like bigger batteries.
Ubrani stated that wi-fi charging would develop into “extra ubiquitous in the coming years as prices come down and energy consumption amongst smartwatches is decreased.” But health watch manufacturers follow the establishment as a result of slower charging is not a huge deal when your watch lasts 1–3 weeks.
So, till that distant future when wi-fi charging is sensible to health manufacturers, COROS’s adapter is the subsequent smartest thing.
Should Qi2 develop into the common smartwatch normal?
At the second, Apple and Galaxy Watches use magnetized wi-fi charging cables, and leaked Pixel Watch 4 renders counsel that Google will ditch its present pin-charging system for wi-fi charging. However, they do not observe a specific normal, corresponding to Qi2 wi-fi charging, so they are not interchangeable.
Switching between Android and iOS is not notably widespread, however it might be good if all the mainline Android watches and Apple Watches used interchangeable Qi2 chargers.
Qi2 helps quick wi-fi charging and a sturdy magnetized match, making it much less probably that your watch fails to cost since you did not seat it correctly. Plus, when you swap manufacturers, your outdated charging cable would not all of the sudden develop into ineffective e-waste. Instead, it might cost different Qi-compliant units.
Because these watches all use comparable processors and {hardware}, I doubt it might be notably onerous for anyone model to use an industry-standard charging coil. And as a result of they solely final a couple of days per cost, prioritizing quicker charging is extra essential for these watches, anyway.
As lengthy as utilizing Qi2 would not forestall watches like the OnePlus Watch 3 from hitting quicker charging speeds, I do not see any draw back to a extra constant common watch normal. But since most manufacturers would favor the flexibility of their very own distinctive charging options, I doubt will see this occur anytime quickly.