Back in November, we first heard rumour of LG applications in Europe for a series of new smartwatch trademarks – Watch Style, Watch Pro, Watch Force and Watch Sole – from the folks at GSMInfo.
Now, it looks like at least one LG watch is passing through the FCC so either this is one of the four or the names simply refer to versions of one piece of hardware.
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Some are calling ‘Urbane 3’ a little early but to be honest that brand doesn’t hold much currency in smartwatches so there’s no harm in LG switching. The actual FCC screens don’t give us much information apart from the fact that the smartwatch will have a round screen and wireless charging.
We can likely also expect LTE, a stainless steel body, IP67 waterproofing and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear 2100 chip inside but there’s no confirmation of any specs yet.
A look at the initial applications suggest that the names are destined for: “Watches that communicate data to PDAs; Smart phones for wrist; Smart phones; Watches that communicate data to smartphones; Smart phones that fit on the user’s face in the manner of eyeglasses.” That doesn’t help a great deal, either.
LG had a quiet CES 2017 on the wearables front with its launch of a collar-style wearable wireless speaker and some not very smart wireless earbuds.
LG’s last smartwatch instalment was actually the Watch Urbane 2nd Edition LTE, the Android Wear smartwatch capable of making calls. It was pulled after originally being announced back in November 2015. It did go back on sale in March this year but since then, much like fellow Wear watch makers Motorola and Huawei, it’s all been very quiet on the new hardware front.
Along with the smartwatch leaks, it looks like LG is prepping a payment service to launch alongside new devices with a trademark also filed for LG Watch Pay. The company’s Pay mobile payment service was revealed in July and with Apple Pay, Samsung Pay and Google prepping its own Android Pay service, it makes sense that LG would follow suit in giving people a way to pay from the wrist.
With Android Wear 2.0 due to (finally) arrive in early February, we wouldn’t be surprised if we get official confirmation of LG’s next smartwatch around that time. Not long to wait, then.
