.jpg)
At Mobile World Congress this year, I had the chance to take a look at LG’s latest smartwatches, the LG Watch Urbane and Watch Urbane LTE.
LG Watch Urbane
The Watch Urbane finds itself in hallowed company as one of the few circular Android Wear smartwatches on the market today, and it might very well be the most attractive Android Wear smartwatch available right now. Its plastic OLED display means that it supports Ambient Mode very well without too much power consumption, and its elegant metal casing and leather band give it an air of quality and sophistication that only the Moto 360 can lay claim to.
As Android Wear smartwatches are all entirely consistent in terms of user interface and user experience as mandated by Google, there is not much to say about Android Wear on the Watch Urbane that you do not already know. It only supports Android smartphones, it brings Google Now and Google Voice Actions to your wrist and you can view and respond to phone notifications from your watch. If you have not yet gotten into the world of smartwatches and would like an aesthetically-pleasing way of doing so, the G Watch Urbane, silly name aside, is worth a look.While the final webOS smartphone rolled off the assembly line around 3 years ago, webOS is the OS that refuses to fade away without a fight. On the LG Watch Urbane LTE, the operating system that Palm built is LG’s platform of choice, although it looks just about unrecognizable to the webOS of old. The Watch Urbane LTE has a slightly chunkier (and I’d say more masculine) body than the regular Watch Urbane (yes, I know the names are really confusing) and sports 2 more hardware buttons than the Android Wear smartwatch, but also packs in many more features such as an actual dialer, web browser and messaging client. Why would you want to browse the web on your tiny smartwatch? I have no idea, but it’s there if you want it.
It was certainly fun to poke through the menus on the WULTE and see how everything works together. It can work on its own without the presence of a phone nearby, but like other smartwatches of its ilk you may want to have a phone handy for configuration purposes. The main menu consists of a scrolling carousel of round, flat icons which brings to mind a rotary dialphone, while a quick settings menu that allows for quick toggling of WiFi, Bluetooth and other onboard functions sits behind a single button press. Obviously, there are a bunch of built-in watchfaces that have a masculine bent – some are more attractive than others. It really is a different category of smartwatch compared to the Watch Urbane, but the WULTE sports a fetching design, a circular display and many more style points than the embarrassing Samsung Gear S, which makes it well worth a look at if you are looking for a smartwatch that does not need to rely on a phone as a crutch.
Sign up here with your email
ConversionConversion EmoticonEmoticon