If you’re interested in getting either of LG’s latest “Made with our friends at Google” Watches and you live in Australia, we’re expecting nothing but bad luck for you, both now and ongoing. We’re relatively sure that due to the inclusion of LTE in the Watch Sport, it may never be officially offered here, and for reasons that make no sense, the same seems to have been applied to the LG Watch Style.
Typically, if you want a product from the US there are various avenues, however for the LG Watch Sport at least it’s only sold via the US Google store, AT&T and Verizon. Dan tried to buy one from the US store this morning as was thwarted by the payment validation. I think that for the foreseeable future, we may be stuck buying from the likes of the eBay extortionists. We’ve also looked at the watches sold by Verizon and AT&T and even if you’re buying outright, you have to get a data plan with it.
We will have to see what other carriers across the globe do as the watch rolls out to the other launch markets, being the UK, Canada, South Korea, South Africa, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Taiwan. Chris, Jason and I will be passing through UAE on our way to MWC in Barcelona, we’ll see what we can find.
The news for the LG Watch Style is a little better. With the watch having wider distribution channels, it won’t be long until it will show up for sale on importing sites. One such site already has the LG Watch Style up for pre-order. B&H Photo is rapidly becoming one of my favourite destinations for importing USA restricted technology. Right now you can pre-order the Watch Style for $325.86 AUD for the Silver and Titanium models, and $364.97 for the Rose Gold model. At present, the Silver and Rose Gold are both stocked with shipping to Australia starting at $46.29 AUD.
At a starting price of $372.15 AUD delivered, that’s actually not too bad. Unfortunately, LG and Google have inexplicably made the LG Watch Style basically undesirable, due to the lack of NFC and the 2 app buttons.
If however, you want the latest and greatest Android Wear watch and you have no intention of using Android Pay (which you should, seriously swap banks it’s worth it) and don’t want quick launch buttons for apps, like Android Pay, then this could be the watch for you.
Let us know where you see either watch for sale, we’ll do out best to quickly moderate comments with URL links so you can share the links.
Does anyone know if Android Pay works in Australia if you import the LG Watch Sport?
Does Android Pay require the watch to have cellular signal or can it work though the phones data?
Does anybody know if Android Pay will work in Australia on the LG Watch Sport? Does Android Pay need the watch to have cellular signal or can it use the phones data for transactions?
Managed to get one from BigAppleBuddy, a local mob that source gear from the US. paid US$50 over retail, Fedexed here over the weekend.
Detects Telstra and Voda networks, I put an AldiMobile SIM in mine, with 365-day expiry, it’s pretty good value for the occasional use it’ll see.
Thanks for that info! So what was the final cost in AUD? The Huawei Watch 2 looks just as if not more expensive.
Thanks in advance
Does all the functionality work?
Hey there mate. Been waiting for someone to buy this watch. So it works and you get reception? My main concern was that the data aspect would be crap because only a few of our bands are supported. ALDI mobile uses Telstra as their provider I’m guessing?
How decent do you think the data connection is?
Really keen to hear more about it as I’m on the fence about if it’s worth it or not.
Cheers
Hey Michael, I’ve been trying to get my hands on one of these watches too, it seems like the best AW watch out at the moment. How are you finding it so far, have you had any trouble with it since you got it?
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so if there was a way of getting the Sport to
oz would it work here?
Does anyone know the frequencies that the sports version of the watch runs? There’s no documentation anywhere about it but I’m assuming if it’s getting exported to several other countries it must have several bands. Wondering if this will work on Australian networks
No guarantee but probably same as Urbane 2, so it will get 850/900/1800/1900 3G (forget the LTE bands as these will be US centric)
Hey there mate thanks for the reply 🙂
Do you know if the US frequencies are decent for speed?
I checked the US frequencies and compared them to our Australian ones and it seems we have maybe 1 band of 4G frequency in common. It’s a shame.
Keen on creating some apps that connect to APIs but it’s been so long since I’ve used 3G (does the US have the H/ H+ network?)
We’re checking in with LG for an official band list for 3G/4G. As soon as we find out, it’ll go up.
Great stuff thanks for that 🙂
I think it will have eSim.
It’s it worth buying LG urbane 2 lte from eBay for $300?
It has everything that lg sport has.
NFC, GPS, etc
Also otter had SIM slot
I’d wait untiil you see confirmation that 1. android wear 2.0 runs well on it (hearing negative things about hte dev review on the Huawei Watch) and 2. the NFC actually works.
No NFC on the urbane 2…otherwise I’d be getting this
I’m kinda thinking the same thing. The Urbane 2 (in my opinion) actually looks like a much nicer watch than the new LG Watch Sport
Typo there, “Unfortunately, LG and Google have inexplicably made the LG Watch Sport basically undesirable, due to the lack of NFC and the 2 app buttons” You mean LG Watch Style.
Fixed, thanks