LG Prepares To Battle The Apple Watch With Its First All-Metal Smartwatch

[snowComet]

LG just announced their first all metal smartwatch through a press statement, called the "Watch Urbane".

 

 

As the title suggested, this watch is made of metal,. In fact it looks like a G Watch R with a metal casing. It has a similar specs as the G Watch R,  Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 chip, 1.3-inch, circular plastic OLED screen, powered by  Android Wear,and etc. But it comes in two colors,  polished silver and gold finish,  and it is complemented by a beautifully stitched natural leather strap for a more classic look (as LG said in their press statement). Also the strap can be replaced by any 22mm wide band.

 

 

“The LG Watch Urbane’s classic design and smart features make it the perfect smartwatch to complement our G Watch and G Watch R, which were designed as more casual and active devices,” said Juno Cho, president and CEO of LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company. “LG Watch Urbane is an important part of our strategy to develop wearable devices that are worn and viewed as everyday accessories, not electronic gadgets.”

 

 

 

 

 LG Watch Urbane's Specifications from the press statement:

Chipset: 1.2GHz Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 400

 Operating System: Android Wear™

 Display: 1.3-inch P-OLED Display (320 x 320, 245ppi)

 Size: 45.5 x 52.2 x 10.9mm

 Memory: 4GB eMMC/ 512MB LPDDR2

 Battery: 410mAh

 Sensors: 9-Axis (Gyro / Accelerometer / Compass) / Barometer /

    PPG (Heart Rate Sensor)

Colors: Gold / Silver

 Other: Dust and Water Resistant (IP67)

 

 

 

LG will show off this Watch Urbane at Mobile World Congress, and no info on pricing and availability was announced in the press statement.

 

IMO, it looks better than the Apple Watch, but it's not my cup of tea. I hope LG would make a metal version of the G Watch R, as I like G Watch R's design  more than that of the Moto 360(and this watch).

 

http://www.lgnewsroom.com/newsroom/contents/64948

 

http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/15/lg-watch-urbane/

 

http://www.designntrend.com/articles/40051/20150216/lg-s-metal-watch-urbane-non-geek-audience-high-fashion.htm

[LePawel]

Now that is sexy...

[XTankSlayerX]

Should I still go for a pebble steel for 100 bucks?

[LAwLz]

It still bothers me that they say 320x320 resolution when it should be pi*160^2.

Surely this must be classified as false advertisement. You can't give your measurements as if the device was a square when your product is actually round.

[soaringchicken]

Cool but I would like a metal band

[Nup]

Damn those look great. Is there an estimated battery life? i'm bad at guessing from specs. 

[ShadowCaptain]

Quite like the looks of this!!!! hmm I hope its good

[Victorious Secret]

Thats nice LG, but till you make watches that are platform agnostic, I can't care. I like it, I think its neat, but I'm not ditching my PHONE just to have it. Thats a lot of hassle. 

So really, consumers are getting slightly screwed in all this. Most won't change phones, they buy what they like. But they are losing the smart watch choices by picking one platform over another. It sucks since I'd like to have a LG watch, but without the promise of even having basic text notifications (something even my Fitbit can do), its pointless for me to make that purchase. 

 

[StareX]

Man this thing is gonna be so cold on the arm it's gonna melt me.

WHY NOT FULL LEATHER BODY?! SO ATLEAST, U WONT HAVE TO DEAL WITH COLD.

Or am I mistaking and the metal won't touch my skin? Cuz it will.

[A.D.A.M]

Mmm,that does look nice

[Guest]

A company that has been putting out Android smartwatches for a while now is releasing a new one - surely it's to compete with the Apple device that has no release date yet and will only work with iOS devices.

I don't know if it's journalists shilling Apple like the obnoxious whores that they are or just mentioning Apple because more people will click the article if they do, but I hate it either way.

[Tech_Dreamer]

Beautiful

[TheSLSAMG]

Thats nice LG, but till you make watches that are platform agnostic, I can't care. I like it, I think its neat, but I'm not ditching my PHONE just to have it. Thats a lot of hassle. 

So really, consumers are getting slightly screwed in all this. Most won't change phones, they buy what they like. But they are losing the smart watch choices by picking one platform over another. It sucks since I'd like to have a LG watch, but without the promise of even having basic text notifications (something even my Fitbit can do), its pointless for me to make that purchase. 

Yeah, though the only companies that are making platform agnostic smart watches on a large scale are fitbit and Pebble from what I can recall. Apple's watch is for their devices only, all of the Android Wear stuff is only compatible with Android and Samsung's watches are Samsung-only. There is at the least more choice on the Android side, what with LG, Motorola, Samsung and others, while Apple have themselves exclusively as of now (and they're definitely not going to let other companies use the Watch OS.) However, the smartwatch market needs to become less proprietary. Nice pieces of hardware should be able to pair up regardless of the OS and the company's agenda.

[LAwLz]

Nice pieces of hardware should be able to pair up regardless of the OS and the company's agenda.

Sadly Google seems to be locking down Android Wear quite a lot so it's not like LG could even add support for iOS by themselves. Rumors has it that they will add support for iOS in the near future but nothing has been confirmed yet.

[martinrox1568]

Man this thing is gonna be so cold on the arm it's gonna melt me.

WHY NOT FULL LEATHER BODY?! SO ATLEAST, U WONT HAVE TO DEAL WITH COLD.

Or am I mistaking and the metal won't touch my skin? Cuz it will.

how is the metal going to get cold? Unless you're in the arctic this will be fine. And if you're in the arctic you got colder things to worry about

[Umair]

Why was Apple even mentioned in the article, I'll never know...

[Sauron]

The apple watch kind of battles itself with that pitiful battery life... how long will THIS one last is the true question? I will still be too expensive for me though.

[Sauron]

Man this thing is gonna be so cold on the arm it's gonna melt me.

WHY NOT FULL LEATHER BODY?! SO ATLEAST, U WONT HAVE TO DEAL WITH COLD.

Or am I mistaking and the metal won't touch my skin? Cuz it will.

 

...metal watches don't get you cold... theoretically they would act a bit like heatsinks but it's really negligible, you wouldn't even notice... in fact it may actually produce some heat since there's a cpu in there.

[mr moose]

Thats nice LG, but till you make watches that are platform agnostic, I can't care. I like it, I think its neat, but I'm not ditching my PHONE just to have it. Thats a lot of hassle. 

So really, consumers are getting slightly screwed in all this. Most won't change phones, they buy what they like. But they are losing the smart watch choices by picking one platform over another. It sucks since I'd like to have a LG watch, but without the promise of even having basic text notifications (something even my Fitbit can do), its pointless for me to make that purchase. 

 

 

I not interested in a smart watch until It is standalone.  If I can enter memos and calendar events,  txt and phone from the watch without a phone then I'm in.  Until then the watch seems more like extra hardware that does little. .