Oppo claims its Bluetooth audio chip delivers wired quality

With Oppo’s Inno Day 2022 in full swing, the company has a few announcements it wants to get off of its chest. These announcements include the newest addition to the MariSilicon family, a health monitor, and some new AR glasses.

The self-developed MariSilicon NPU was first launched back in 2021 with the MariSilicon X. During Inno Day 2022, Oppo unveiled the successor to last year’s chip — the MariSilicon Y. Oppo claims this new Bluetooth audio SoC is the first SoC to use N6RF process technology. It also says that the chip is the first to transmit 24-bit/192kHz ultra-clear lossless audio through Bluetooth. This chip will boost the Bluetooth bandwidth by 50% up to 12Mbps compared to the current highest-spec Bluetooth chip.

In addition, it will have a new codec called ultra-resolution lossless codec (URLC) and will independently provide 590GOP for real-time audio processing and AI workloads. Oppo also says the MariSilicon Y will be able to isolate the sound of specific objects and provide spatial rendering.

In short, it should be able to provide wireless connectivity with audio comparable to that of a wired connection. Some other benefits that are said to come with the chip are 66% less transceiver power consumption and the chip will be 33% smaller.

Last year, Oppo established its Oppo Health Lab to develop health-related products and now we’re seeing the fruits of its labor. The OHealth H1 health monitor will be the first product in Oppo’s smart health category.

Described as being for family use, Oppo says the OH1 is a 6-in-1 device that can measure blood oxygen, ECG, heart and lung auscultation, heart rate, body temperature, and sleep tracking. The 95g device is designed to make it easy to take anywhere and doesn’t need to be worn for sleep monitoring. It can be next to you or by your pillow, and it will reportedly still record accurate measurements.

With a device like this, it’s important to think about data privacy. To protect your health information, the OH1 reportedly stores the data locally by default so you can control how the data is used.

During the event, Oppo brought out a demo of its new AR glasses — the Oppo Air Glass 2. Like the Air Glass, the company doesn’t describe this gadget as augmented reality, instead, the company calls it “assisted reality.”

This time around, Oppo opted for a design more reminiscent of normal glasses. Whereas the original Air Glass looked closer to a more advanced version of the Google Glass from back in the day.

Because there’s more hardware, the Air Glass 2 weighs more than the Air Glass, but not by much. The Air Glass weighed in at 30g and the Air Glass 2 will come in at 38g, which should be light enough to stave off any weight-related discomfort.

Oppo says that its new AR glasses will allow users to make calls, perform real-time translation, provide location-based navigation, convert voice into text, and more.

Despite the welcomed info dump, the company never gave a release date for any of the products mentioned. However, it’s likely we’ll see the Marisilicon Y in next year’s flagship phones. As for the other products, we’ll just have to wait and see.