LG's Android G Watch goes on sale worldwide
08 Jul 2014
LG announced that its first Android Wear running wearable, the G Watch, had gone on sale globally, NDTV reported.
The company had confirmed that the LG G Watch would be available both online as also at stores in 12 countries, including - Australia, Canada, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Spain, South Korea, United Kingdom, and US.
It would be available from physical retailers in 15 countries, including Brazil, Mexico, Russia, Singapore and New Zealand. According to the company, the G Watch price would be announced locally in each market.
Google offered the LG G Watch, initially unveiled in March, for pre-order with an 'Add to Cart' option at Rs14,999 via Google Play India within hours of Google's I/O 2014 Keynote address. However, the LG G Watch is currently listed as 'out of inventory' at the Google Play India
The other Android Wear-based smart watch unveiled at the Google I/O, the Samsung Gear Live, was also up for pre-order earlier this month at Rs15,900 via Google Play.
Interestingly, the Gear Live was also now listed as 'out of inventory' on Google Play India.
The LG G Watch comes with a 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor; an always-on 1.65-inch IPS (280x280 pixels) display; IP67 rating resistant to dust and water ; 4GB built-in storage, 512MB of RAM, a 400mAh battery, Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity, and a 9-axis sensor.
The device has dimensions of 37.9x46.5x9.95mm with a weight of 63 grams.
The LG G Watch would be available in Black Titan and White Gold, and can be personalised with any standard 22mm strap available in the market.
Meanwhile early adopters of Google's smartwatch standard have found that paid apps fail to work on Android Wear devices online Android device website Android Police reported.
There being no standalone apps for Android Wear devices currently, these need to be first downloaded to an Android phone, which then sends the relevant part of the app to the smartwatch via Bluetooth.
However, it seems the encryption keys sent to an Android phone with the downloading of the app from Google Play were not making it over to the smartwach.
This meant Android Wear devices that received app data from smartphones had no way of decrypting that data unless the app was free to start with.
One solution was for developers to make their Android Wear-compatible apps free, though that obviously was not ideal.
Though this comes early in the saga of Android Wear, the strange oversight should have been caught earlier, according to commentators.
