The upcoming launch of Android Wear 2.0 – which this week was set as early February – is also expected to be highlighted by the launch of two ‘Google’ watches running the latest version of Android Wear. The watches are said to be made by existing Android Wear manufacturers and a new smartwatch, which has just passed through the US-based Federal Communications Commission (FCC), could be one of them.
The watch, or watches, there’s actually three listed as being tested – LG-W280, LG-W280A, LG-W280V – are all higher model numbers than LG’s previous Android Wear watches the LG Urbane (ZNFW150) and Urbane 2nd edition (ZNFW200V), the latter of which is currently a test device for the Android Wear 2.0 developer preview. The latest watch doesn’t list Android Wear 2.0 as the OS, but the screenshots of the FCC ID show a watch running circular icons as found in the Android Wear 2.0 dev preview:
The watch in question has LTE connectivity, as evidenced by the test results published by the FCC. LTE bands tested by the FCC, appear to include Bands 2, 4, 5 and 13, but could also include more that aren’t required in the US. Also tested were 2G/3G bands as well as Wi-Fi (2.4GHz) and Bluetooth.
Whether this is a ‘Google’ Android Wear watch remains to be seen, LG could of course be simply updating their range. The existence of Google Android Wear watches was however confirmed by a Google product manager last month. These watches, according to the PM, will be launched in Q1, just like Android Wear 2.0, making all this a little too coincidental.
We’re looking forward to seeing what Google and their Android Wear partners have in store for hardware, which will include NFC to take advantage of the new Android Pay functionality being brought into the platform. If you’re into mobile payments, then this is probably the hardware you’re looking for.
According to my previous experience I am a bit of worried about the build quality of LG watch. Google should co-operate with manufacturers such as Huawei or some purely watches companies.