What you need to know

• In an interview with Wareable, a OnePlus rep acknowledged that the one-size Watch 3 “remains heavy for a small wrist.”
• He promised that they will “fix” the lack of a small option this year, which could suggest a smaller OnePlus Watch 3R or Watch 4.
• He also discussed the reason why the OnePlus Watch 3 only has an LTE version in China.

As much as the OnePlus Watch 3 has impressed us so far with its incredible battery life, we don’t know how long it would last with a lighter, more comfortable case size. But based on statements from Dr. Leo Zhang, the Head of R&D at the OnePlus Health Lab, they’re “working on” a smaller OnePlus Watch that should answer that question soon.

PULSE by Wareable, which interviewed Zhang, quotes him as saying, “It’s true that the [46mm OnePlus Watch 3] remains heavy for a small wrist and that this typically affects women, but we will fix that this year. We value our customer’s voice and we’re working on that.”

As much as the OnePlus Watch 3 improved on the Watch 2, a smaller model was one of the few requested changes that OnePlus didn’t deliver this year. The Watch 3 weighs about 50g without the strap or 80g with it; that’s lighter than the 60g Galaxy Watch Ultra, but significantly heavier than the 34g Galaxy Watch 7 or 37g Pixel Watch 3 with comparable display sizes.

Given that OnePlus will “fix that” in 2025, we could theoretically see a smaller OnePlus Watch 3R this summer — a successor to the sporty Watch 2R — but the Watch 4 in 2026 seems more likely. Either way, we think plenty of people would lose a day or two of battery life and swap from a 1.5- to 1.3-inch display to make the OnePlus Watch 4 less distractingly hefty.

In this same interview, Wareable asked Zhang about the lack of an LTE option in North America and Europe.

“The technology isn’t a problem, that part is quite simple,” Zhang explained. “In China’s domestic market, we have an LTE version. In an overseas market, we need to work with the carriers—and that’s a big hurdle. We need to work with carriers so users can put in an eSIM and have a data plan.”

Zhang continued on to tell the site that they’re also “working on” adding LTE by speaking with carriers, “especially in Europe.”

Unlike his promise about a smaller OnePlus Watch, he didn’t give a timetable for adding LTE, whether to the Watch 3, Watch 4, or a later model. And based on his words, it appears OnePlus’s first priority will be to bring LTE to Europe before it focuses on the United States, where its wearable sales may be lower.

OnePlus has had a slightly messy Watch 3 launch week, given its “Meda in China” typo and a disappointingly short update promise. Despite this, we’re highly encouraged to see OnePlus prioritizing a smaller watch design, in order to make its watches more competitive with the other best Android smartwatches.

Recently, NVidia announced in their blog that the company is implementing a new “feature” to their RTX 3060 and future cards. This new implementation will detect mining-related operations and limit the GPU resources, thus reducing mining speed.

What’s going on?

So far, the only affected cryptocurrency is Ethereum. The hashrate reduction is a solid 50%. According to NVidia, the reason for this ‘nerf’ is to decrease the demand for new-gen GPUs in the mining community, and fight the current gaming GPU shortage.

NVidia however still wants to support the mining community. In order to do that, the company announced the NVidia CMP – a GPU-like card without any output ports designed specifically for mining GPU-minable coins.

We have already seen something similar with the Nvidia P102-100 GPUs , though never before NVidia has forced miners away from using gaming GPUs so openly.

The Downsides

As a gamer myself, I would love to see the gaming GPU shortage issue solved. In fact, the only reason I’ve got into mining a few years ago was so I could game on a high-end GPU and have it pay for itself over time.

Having gaming gear that pays for itself is any gamer’s dream. Now, do these actions by NVidia get us any closer to that dream?

The answer is probably no. Here’s why:

#1. Big Mining Facilities Will Still Deplete Gaming GPU Stocks

Some people zealously defend NVidia for its decision. What they don’t understand is that mining is a GPU sink. Big mining facilities will keep buying GPUs in bulk as long as mining is somewhat profitable.

And here’s the thing – NVidia is more than happy to supply miners with gaming GPUs.

Some of you already noticed that NVidia is using the term ‘Mining community’ a bit too vaguely, which makes some of their public statements misleading. Let me explain.

We need to understand that the mining community is comprised of two groups of people. The first group are the home miners, most of which are gamers, the ones NVidia is supposed to be defending.

The second group are the big mining facilities. They are the ones that buy most of the GPU’s and cause the gaming GPU shortage to begin with. I am talking about the multimillion companies, most of which are located in China, Iceland and other countries with free electricity. Those companies can afford to buy a big share of the available GPU stock for their farms.

If you wonder how big they are, we are talking about several companies that are worth billions of dollars that operate huge mining facilities with millions of gaming GPU’s in them.

#2 Big Mining Facilities Will Bypass the Hashrate Restrictions

NVidia stated that this hashrate limitation is implemented in the “RTX 3060 software drivers”. Thing is, custom drivers are a thing, and so are custom BIOS flashes.

Big mining companies have their own teams of IT engineers who make their own drivers for optimized mining. Only amateur miners (most of who are gamers) mine under Windows using official NVidia drivers.

This point begs a question: who will get affected by the hashrate nerf, then?

#3 Gamers Are the Only Ones Getting ‘Nerfed’ Here

Think about this: as a gamer who bought the new RTX 30xx card, you will no longer be able to mine in your spare time to make some extra money with your GPU. Not as efficiently as before anyway.

A lot of gamers are getting into mining to make up for the insanely high costs of graphic cards. Now, this alternative will become less viable.

Also, if the mining craze calms down, you might no longer have the option to go to eBay and buy a used new-gen GPU for a fraction of the price as you could back in 2019. Instead, you will have a million offers of used CMP cards you cannot use for gaming.

#4 Is Ethereum Really the Issue Here?

Another thing to consider is that NVidia is nerfing the mining hashrate of only one algorithm, which is ethash. This again rises questions on who’s going to get affected by the nerf the most. Ethereum is one of the most known coins, and it’s one of the easiest ones to mine, too. There are a lot of user-friendly miner software for the coin like CudoMiner, which makes it easier for amateurs (i.e. gamers) to get into mining.

With Ethereum mining no longer being profitable on the newest GPU’s, more experienced users will still find ways around this issue. We can always switch to non-ethash altcoins that are just a bit less profitable to mine, or use custom drivers under Linux to bypass the hashrate limitation.

The average joe however might think that GPU mining is straightforward over.

#5. NVidia’s Decision Might Affect Ethereum Decentralization

 The sole idea of GPU-minable cryptocurrencies is that anyone with a gaming GPU at home can contribute to the safety of the blockchain. This is called decentralization, and it’s is what makes cryptocurrencies so appealing. 

Obviously, the more experienced users will find their way around this issue. However, the fewer average gamers are mining the currency, the less decentralized it becomes.

On the bright side, this might open new possibilities for AMD and maybe even Intel. Besides, the GPUs we have right now will not be affected by these limitations, and they might still be profitable to mine with for a few years from now.

Will We Have Less GPU’s Now?

We are currently experiencing a global semiconductor shortage. This leads us to a question: what chips will NVidia use on their CMP’s?

First of all, developing a new chip costs hundreds of millions of dollars, so there’s little chance that NVidia will actually do that for a mining GPU. The mining scene is very unpredictable, and the insane demand in mining gear might end abruptly any day.

According to the company, they will use dice that weren’t good enough for gaming GPU’s, but that will do just fine for mining.

As The Verge pointed out though, the official shot of a CMP chip looks nothing similar to that of an Ampere-based RTX 3080/3090, or the GA104 used in the RTX 3060Ti/3070. Maybe NVidia is putting old Pascal architecture chips to use.

I’m not going to speculate on whether those sub-performing dice could still be used for gaming GPU’s. I know there are a lot of talk regarding how NVidia and other companies managed to give bad dice a second life in the past. All I’m going to say is that the new CMP will not mine as fast as the RTX 30xx cards. They might however be more power-efficient.  That we will know once third-party testing becomes possible.

In Conclusion

I’m not here to bash on NVidia for their marketing decisions. The only takeaway here is that I would personally not expect this decision by NVidia to solve any issues with gaming GPU supply.

The new CMP cards might be interesting if they get sold for cheap. Just keep in mind that they have zero resale value so they still might not be the best option for home miners.

Thank you for reading. As always, your comments, suggestions and questions are welcome.

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