LG announces the LG Watch Urbane LTE, the first 4G smartwatch

It’s been slow on the uptake, but it seems as though wearables with mobile data connections are really starting to kick off. So far all the smartwatches have come with 3G, and LG has decided to go one step further and announce the 4G LG Watch Urbane LTE. Just like the rumours predicted.

We heard about the regular LG Watch Urbane last week, and as similar as they are there are a few key differences between it and the Urbane LTE. For starters the Urbane LTE has a larger 700 mAh battery, which provides the watch with several days of standby power. It also comes with NFC, and three physical buttons for navigating through menus and settings.

Interestingly the Urbane LTE is not going to run on Android Wear, and according to The Verge LG says it won’t be running on its in-house webOS platform either. That’s rather odd, because having a new smartwatch OS independent from its existing software is a very strange move to make. Then again LG may have decided that webOS is not the ideal platform to run a smartwatch on, and could be developing something unique to lower how reliant it is on Google. Similar to what Samsung has been doing with Tizen.

Sadly it’s not clear at this point whether the Urbane LTE will be able to function independently from a smartphone. Hopefully it won’t be, because smartwatches won’t really get chance to row into their own unless they function as independent devices.

We don’t know anything about pricing or release just yet, but LG has promised that the Urbane and Urbane LTE will both be on show at MWC next week. Expect to hear more about both watches, and the Urbane LTE’s mystery OS, then.