LG Watch Urbane LTE makes phone calls, supports mobile payments

Earlier this month, LG announced a premium version of its G Watch R, the Watch Urbane, which promises to bring luxury to the Android Wear crowd.

Now, the company has announced an LTE version of the same, with a larger 700mAh battery, support for voice calls and NFC-based mobile payments, as well as a gyroscope, heart rate monitor, GPS, as well as sensors for gyroscope, compass and atmospheric pressure.

The smartwatch bears more than a striking resemblance to the webOS-based smartwatch created specifically for Audi during CES, and that’s no accident: while LG has not come out and said the Watch Urbane LTE runs webOS itself, it has alluded to that fact that it runs a variant of that same core, likely because Android Wear does not yet support independent cellular basebands necessary to make phone calls. LG calls this the LG Wearable Platform operating system, but isn’t disclosing what the app situation is going to be like. Think of the device as LG’s answer to Samsung’s Gear S.

Unlike the Watch Urbane, which uses the same touchscreen/single crown combination as other Android Wear watches, the Urbane LTE features three buttons on the right side, which “allows for easy access to a number of functions without having to swipe through multiple menu screens.”

LG isn’t talking about pricing for the Watch Urbane or the Watch Urbane LTE, but you can be sure that the latter will be more in line with the stainless steel version of the Apple Watch, the pricing of which also hasn’t been announced just yet.

Specs:

• Chipset: 1.2GHz Qualcomm® SnapdragonTM 400
• Operating System: LG Wearable Platform
• Display: 1.3-inch P-OLED (320 x 320 / 245ppi)
• Network: LTE
• Memory: 4GB eMMC / 1GB LPDDR3
• Battery: 700mAh
• Sensors: 9 Axis / Barometer / PPG / GPS
• Connectivity: WiFi 802.11 b, g, n / Bluetooth 4.0LE / NFC
• Color: Silver
• Other: Dust and Water Resistant (IP67) / Speaker / Microphone

[source]LG Newsroom[/source]