Hands-on with WebOS-based LG Watch Urbane LTE and Android Wear-based LG Watch Urbane
Our first look at LG's new webOS and Android Wear smartwatches — LG has kicked off Mobile World Congress this Sunday morning in Barcelona by showing off its two Watch Urbane smartwatches for the first time.
Context & Ripple Effects
LG came to Mobile World Congress with two versions of the same watch. The round-display, metal-body Android Wear model was announced on February 16; days later, coverage confirmed the LTE variant runs webOS instead of Android Wear. This hands-on is the first time both are seen side by side.
The split OS strategy has a precedent in LG's own pipeline: at CES in January it showed a functional Open webOS smartwatch with Audi car integration, so the webOS Urbane LTE is that experiment productized rather than a one-off demo.
First-order effects
- Buyers face a forked lineup from one brand: the standard Watch Urbane gets Google's app ecosystem via Android Wear, while the LTE model trades that for standalone connectivity on LG's own software.
- LG's webOS watch effort moves from concept to shipping hardware, giving the company a second wearable platform it controls end to end.
Second-order effects
- Google faces pressure to close the standalone-connectivity gap, and within months Android Wear gains cellular support — the follow-up [[a:833751|Watch Urbane 2nd Edition LTE becomes the first Android Wear device with cellular capability]], effectively absorbing the feature that justified the webOS variant.
- Rival watchmakers watching MWC see that premium metal-and-round designs can be built on either stack, weakening Android Wear's default position as the only serious smartwatch OS.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, wearables fragment into companion devices tethered to phones versus standalone connected devices — and OS vendors that only serve the first category cede the second to whoever owns the modem and the software stack.
- LG's hedge also previews the consolidation problem that persists into the Android Wear 2.0 era: by early 2017 its Style and Sport models are back exclusively on Google's platform, suggesting maintaining a proprietary watch OS proved unsustainable for a hardware maker of LG's scale.
The trend: Smartwatch makers are testing whether standalone connectivity justifies a second operating system, with Google's platform absorbing the winning features and squeezing out proprietary alternatives.