Mobile World Congress happens in about two weeks, but LG just couldn't contain itself. On Monday, the company announced the LG Watch Urbane, a smartwatch aiming for the "luxury" crowd.
The specs are identical to the LG G Watch R: a fully round 1.3-inch, 320×320 P-OLED display sits atop a 1.2GHz Snapdragon 400 with 512MB of RAM and a 410 mAh battery. The real draw of the watch is its design, which LG's press release says is for the "sophisticated and cosmopolitan wearer" — basically, it looks like a normal watch.
The Watch Urbane has a stainless steel body and a 22 mm removable leather watch band. The device runs Android Wear and has IP67 water and dust resistance. It also has a heart rate sensor. While there are no dimensions for the product yet, LG says it is thinner than the 9.7 mm G Watch R, and it has a smaller bezel. The bezel also ditches the G Watch R's second marking on the bezel, which often proved irrelevant when using the watch.
LG hasn't said how much the Watch Urbane will cost. We get a little nervous when companies start throwing around the word "luxury," but we can't imagine it costing much more than the $300 G Watch R. Horrible product naming aside, the watch looks pretty promising. Smartwatches need to look good before normal people will wear them, and LG seems to be headed in the right direction. We'll have to see what it looks like in person (hopefully) at MWC.
