Quantcast
Jump to content

LG Watch Urbane LTE


Alex

Recommended Posts

You may never have the opportunity to buy it, but LG’s Watch Urbane LTE is a vital step forward for smartwatches. We were first to find extensive photos of the watch back at CES, and it’s finally come to fruition at Mobile World Congress.

 

We’ve seen a lot of Android Wear watches over the last eight months, but none of them are lighting up the sales charts. There are a lot of reasons for this, one of which is Google’s confusing, messy watch interface. Android Wear clogs the screen with countless Google Now notification cards that are difficult to control and impossible to predict. You don’t really know what the next screen holds when you’re on an Android Wear watch, and that’s not fun. LG is committed to Google, but has recognized some of its software failures. With the Watch Urbane LTE, it has gone rogue to fix a few of them.

Running a version of LG’s WebOS (the operating system that powered the Palm Pre years ago), the Urbane LTE has the ability to connect to a wireless carrier without tethering to a phone. Yep, this watch can have its own phone number, take calls, make calls, and send/receive text messages by itself. The predictive text on the keyboard is better than you’d expect, too. We’re not going to say it’s fun to type on a tiny watch face, but it certainly is doable here. Android Wear has none of these features yet, nor support for NFC payments, which LG has also integrated.

 

Choosing when to wait for Google to add new features to its Android OS and when to go rogue and do your own thing is a dilemma manufacturers often face, and LG is right on the nose with the Urbane LTE. The new watch runs on a Snapdragon 400 processor, 1GB of RAM, 4GB of memory storage, and a 700mAh battery; it has LTE connectivity, a heart-rate monitor, an accelerometer, near-field communication (NFC), and a 1.3-inch, 320 × 320 P-OLED screen. These enhancements in battery, RAM, sensors, and LTE put it ahead of almost everything else on the market, and LG’s WebOS software shows huge promise.

Instead of the notification mess that is Android Wear, the Watch Urbane LTE has a button that takes you to a scrolling list of apps, which whip like a tornado around the edge of the circular screen. Having a list of apps on your watch is a simple enough idea, and one that even the Apple Watch has, but Google has failed to provide anything like this in Android watches yet. A tap of the top button on the Urbane LTE brings up quick settings — again, a basic, but very helpful feature — which lets you turn on and off Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc. The bottom button acts as a back button. Again, great idea.

 

LG has also amped up watch face customization. Using its store, you can choose from different looks and customize the colors or texture of the background, time-keeping handles, and index of your watch face. Digital faces are available as well.

Finally, outside of the impressive new tech it brings to the table, the Watch Urbane LTE is also the most beautiful and stylish watch LG has created yet. It’s still definitively masculine, but it looks a lot better on thinner wrists (like my own) than previous models. This is thanks to a better-integrated watch band, which blends right into the sides of the brushed metal face. Style is a major part of the equation on smartwatches. With the Urbane LTE, LG nailed it.

 

We named the LG Watch Urbane LTE our favorite wearable product at Mobile World Congress 2015. It’s currently only slated to ship in South Korea, but if it starts lighting up the sales charts, we could see it elsewhere. Still, no matter what the future holds, we hope Google sees the light and fixes Android Wear up, or LG will continue to invest in WebOS. The Watch Urbane LTE is exactly where smartwatches need to go.

Read more:

link hidden, please login to view

 

 

 

 

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 5 months later...
  • 5 months later...

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Similar Topics

    • By Rizwan Sumra
      My LG television does not have a CI Module and pay chennals shows scrambled. In some LG televisions, some free to air channels work fine while others pay chennals will display the message "No CI Module". How to watch other LGTV "Scrambled" channels.
    • By pivotCE
      Have you been wondering what LG will do with webOS next?
      According to
      link hidden, please login to view, a since pulled website has arisen (here are the cached pages from Google  and ) detailing info about LG’s all new platform supposedly called ““. It is thought that this is going to rival Samsung’s Tizen, maybe even in retaliation to Apple’s new smart watch. Hopefully our loyal fan-base will make it popular! According to pictures pulled from the site (see below), the SDK for the said smart watches, will supposedly be released with the announcement of LG’s plans to move webOS to the Smart watch platform. To see the other banners pulled from the site click
      .


    • By ajmboy
      I just finished watching Game of Thrones on HBO, never watched it when it was out. Now I'm wondering what other series should I start watching? 
      Westworld? I'm inclined to check out SEE on Apple TV. is anyone using Apple TV with LG webOS tvs?
       
       
    • By Fritz Heckert
      I bought a new LG Smart TV Type: 43UQ75009LF.AEUD with webOS 22.
      I previously had the type: 43UH620V with webOS 4
      The problem is that I have a lot of recordings from the old LG TV on my hard drive, all from non-encrypted, open channels such as ARD and ZDF Germany, which I can no longer play on the new LG TV because the data is encrypted .
      Is there a solution to make these files (STR), I copied the whole "LG Smart TV" folder including the "lg_dvr" subfolders and the "TN" folder to my iMac, to make it viewable again?
      I know that the .STR files contain the video. Is there a solution under macOS or Windows10(11) to decrypt this data and make it viewable?
      I couldn't find anything with a Google search.
      Thanks for tips on this.

  • Similar Tagged Content

×
×
  • Create New...