There are plenty of smartwatches available in the Indian market today—some good, some not so great. However, all of these are primarily aimed at adults who already have another smartphone and perhaps more personal gadgets to go about their daily lives. Oppo and Vivo’s sister company, imoo, recently launched its Z7 watch phone that’s made specifically for kids. Priced at Rs. 14,990, let’s see what it offers for kids and if it does so well enough.
The Z7 has a square 1.3-inch display with either Powder Pink and Blue color options. These straps feel premium and are pretty comfortable to wear, even for hours on the go. The watch isn’t too light for a kid, though, but then this isn’t supposed to be a conventional kids' watch, at around 65 grams. The right side of the watch has the power/lock button, while on the top side of the display, you have a front-facing camera. The left side houses the charging port, and on the back, it packs a SIM card slot and some sensors for health measurements. The top side locates a push button, by which the top of the watch comes off its base crown to reveal the rear camera (more on that later)."
The watch is equipped with a 740mAh battery, which comfortably lasts for two days. It takes under two hours to charge the watch from 1% to full.
Powered by a Speadtrum W317 chipset along with 128MB of RAM and 4Gb of internal storage, the Z7 runs on Android OS and comes with a few useful features for parents to keep a little check on their child’s wellbeing. You can install the binding app on your smartphone to make certain adjustments and settings to the watch. For instance, set contacts that the watch can make and receive calls with, check the location continuously, check the kid’s temperature and so on.
When you make a call to the watch, The 5MP rear camera and the 2MP front camera can be used simultaneously to see the background with the rear camera and the kid themselves from the front camera.
Swiping down on the Home screen brings you connectivity options. Swiping left is to go back to the previous menu, while doing so at the home screen takes you to the dialer and messaging. Swiping right takes you to apps (very few of them) and Settings. Apps include stopwatch,. AI scanner to detect items over the Internet, and App Center to install more apps from. There’s WiFi but it only supports 2.4Ghz networks and you can’t add a hidden WiFi SSD either. For calling and messaging, 4G connectivity via a SIM card is present. There's a PPG sensor as well as something mood detector (not exactly sure what it runs). Heart rate monitoring doesn’t seem like the most accurate of them all but it;s just there for the namesake, I guess. There’s temperature monitoring for the parents to keep a check on their kid’s body temperature as and when required. There’s no option for always-on display, though.
With some useful features like these, the Z7 is a pretty interesting watch that might fulfil a kid’s need to have a gadget with them while also giving their parents something extra to keep an eye on their child’s safety and health. I would have liked to see the companion app work a little more smoothly, the watch display to be a little brighter and also the watch offered in more than just two standard colour options considering this is meant to be worn by kids.
