LG G Watch R

http://www.lg.com/global/gwatch/index.html#main

by jbernardo95 • 12 years ago

146 114 12 years ago

spaulo12• 12 years ago

Wow. A "responsive" page that hates all but a couple specific aspect ratios. It literally won't show you the page if you aren't in an aspect ratio it expects. WTF? http://d.pr/i/12ZBj

greyskull• 12 years ago

That's a first. In my experience at least. Sheesh.

emp_• 12 years ago

I had a similar issue, tfw "responsive" means adapting to the site rules, not the other way around. Reminds me of "This site is best viewed in 1024x768", just poor web dev work.

dublinben• 12 years ago

I've never seen an image hosting site require so much Javascript (3 different domains!) just to display a PNG.

mikestew• 12 years ago

"Please rotate your screen for the optimal service."

How about I immediately close the browser tab instead, and never give another thought to the LG G Whatever?

(iPhone 6 Small, if anyone cares.)

sahaskatta• 12 years ago

I really wish the could name their products better. Their two watches right now are named:

- LG G Watch

- LG G Watch R

Fortunately, the product is fairly decent. (I've seen it in person.) I happen to have a Samsung Gear Live, which is quite comparable in terms of specs. I think that Android Wear probably needs another year (or 2nd generation of watches) to mature a bit more.

efiftythree• 12 years ago

Wonder if they will get a nastygram from Casio. "G-Watch" / "G-Shock".

notastartup• 12 years ago

I wish that this doesn't require any phone. I wish that the watch could completely replace the smartphone. You'd look really stupid looking at your watch all the time while you are walking or in the restaurant.

132• 12 years ago

I'm not sure that's possible or desirable. They're relying on a bigger device for their cellular connection. Given that there's no immediate mention of battery life, we can assume it's quite a problem already without jamming more radios in there.

carsongross2• 12 years ago

I'd love to see a round smart watch that homaged the Rolex GMT look-and-feel and then utilized a rotating (and maybe clickable?) diver-style bezel for input (maybe like the 1st gen ipods) in addition to the touch screen.

Classic, understated look, but another few interesting dimensions of input.

daeken2• 12 years ago

Wow, why has no one done the rotating bezel yet? I hadn't thought about it before, but that seems like such a simple, obvious way to interact with a smartwatch. That should be done.

hbosch2• 12 years ago

I think some of the trouble with a rotating bezel is accidental input. I have a diver with a sturdy, mono-directional bezel, and it gets bumped around to odd positions from time to time -- maybe once every couple weeks. And that is with a bezel not designed to be used often.

A UI-driving bezel would have to be bi-directional, for starters. Then, it would have to be looser AND more resilient than normal bezels, since they will be used more often. And even once those items are fine-tuned, we only have navigation without confirmation. Do we press the bezel to confirm? Can the bezel be mounted as a rocker, for multiple inputs, like a volume key? Maybe. A glass or ceramic capacitive bezel, though, would really "wow" me!

I concede that I'd rather have a bezel input than Apple Watch's crown input, which to me looked inconvenient, but seeing as the jury is still out on round vs. square design for these "smartwatch" UIs (a rotating bezel only works on round watches) it would be quite risky from a usability perspective.

HCIdivision17• 12 years ago

The lack of using rotating bits confounds me. I've wanted that since watching Big O years ago. It's such an obvious input method for selection, especially after the iPod popularized it. Truly bizarre blind spot.

justboxing• 12 years ago

"Take the Next Turn! Turn-by-Turn Navigation."

On a motorcycle, on the highway, looking down on your wrist and reading the directions off a watch is a sure shot way to get killed. What were these designers thinking?

dabeeeenster• 12 years ago

Maybe they were thinking that you wouldn't use it on a motorcycle?

georgemcbay• 12 years ago

The accompanying photo on the website is of a dude on a motorcycle.

http://www.lg.com/global/gwatch/index.html#urbanstyle5

Hopefully he's wearing a single-ear bluetooth or something in the ear you can't see and getting his turn by turn that way, but the inset of a screenshot and the highly visible watch on his wrist to match certainly give an implied bit of poor usage advice.

In any case, more of a failure of the website marketing team than the watch or Android Wear designers, but it is a valid point.

pkulak• 12 years ago

I bought one of these for my Pebble:

http://amzn.com/B001SAGBHW

It's freakin' awesome to use Google bike nav to get to some place I've never been before.

itp3• 12 years ago

Sincere question -- is your concern looking away from the road, or looking down at your wrist? I take glances out of the direct line of my travel all the time, to check lanes around me, look at the speedometer, tachometer, fuel level, etc.

I do find it surprising that the pictured model would wear it on the right arm, though, since it's much easier to take your left hand off of the handlebar -- you don't tend to need to use the clutch when cruising on a highway, whereas (unless you have a throttle lock) your right hand will typically stay on the bar.

I do think motorcycle safety is important, but your reaction seems a little overboard to me. Having navigation on a small screen on my wrist seems like a relatively nice perk.

rich90usa• 12 years ago

Exactly. As a little more paranoid motorcycle rider I'd welcome being able to pull over and check my watch - instead of having to pull over, take off my gloves, unzip my jacket, and check my smartphone.

qzervaas• 12 years ago

Wouldn't be the worst thing, but you definitely wouldn't wear it on your right wrist (throttle). 99% of the time if you ride one-handed, it's the left hand (clutch) you lift up.

easong2• 12 years ago

I've used my Moto 360 on my motorcycle, on the highway, wearing it on my right wrist. It's not for use with gauntlet gloves, but really all you need to know is that you need to take the next exit - a wrist buzz and the screen lighting up is an easy way to tell. Mounting your smartphone on the bars/using bluetooth speakers is obviously preferable, but it's better/safer than duct taping your phone to your wrist (which I have also done).

72deluxe7• 12 years ago

Can you detect the buzz over the vibration of the road?

hazz• 12 years ago

This is the first smart watch I've seen that actually looks good. It's clearly aiming to look as much as possible like a traditional watch when not actively being used.

It does look huge on the woman's wrist on the second slide/page/section thing. Big watches tend to be a men's fashion thing, so I wonder if this will present problems.

The heart rate feature seems really out of place and useless. What use is a recent history of your heart rate? Presumably there are plans to integrate more features into the health part of things, because at the moment it looks a lot like a "because we can" feature.

prawn• 12 years ago

Large sunglasses quickly returned to fashion so it might work for a women's watch too?

pcurve• 12 years ago

love the jab at google watch. As a watch wearer, I can see myself getting on-board with this if the battery life is reasonable.

I doubt they will find too many female takers in its current form factor.

iandanforth• 12 years ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but most (all) of those product photos are faked. If you're curious what it looks like on a real wrist:

http://media.gizmodo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/DSCF71...

From full Gizmodo review here: http://gizmodo.com/lg-g-watch-r-review-worthy-of-your-wrist-...

arjie• 12 years ago

Nice! Screen looks a bit off, but the hardware design is streets ahead of the main competitor: Apple Watch. These round devices look way better. A bit big, so maybe it'll only work on men, but round is a significant advantage.

SirPulse• 12 years ago

Round is a significant advantage? How so?

taude• 12 years ago

Agree that the LG looks better. The Apple Watch, designed by any other company than Apple, would be getting lambasted in the tech media for being ugly, techy-looking, chunky, etc...but guess we'll have to wait to see how all these watches really look in person for the final call.

arrrg3• 12 years ago

The materials and build quality look like total crap, to be honest. That’s phone level care, not watch level. There doesn’t seem to have been put any care at all into the details of this watch. On a micro level this watch is about a billion miles behind what it looks like the Apple Watch seems it will be like.

On a macro level tastes differ. That said, I do think this watch looks like a cheap tech gadget while the Apple Watch clearly doesn’t. You might not like how the Apple Watch looks overall, but at least it doesn’t look like a cheap toy like this watch does. (I mean, look at the back of this thing! That’s unacceptable for a watch.)

(That said, I do agree that, while on a micro level the details of the Apple Watch look to be astonishing, on a macro level the overall impression doesn’t do those micro level details justice. It’s certainly possible to do better – but not by completely ignoring that micro level like this watch does.)

dbuxton• 12 years ago

Not quite on topic but my favourite is the watch face image for 10 Greek St (a great restaurant in London's Soho)[0]

It's reminding of a supper reservation but as many (I'm sure including the designers!) know, 10 Greek St doesn't take reservations for supper[1]

Tiny thing but suggests that whoever did the creative here had a sense of humour.

[0] http://www.lg.com/global/gwatch/index.html#outdoorstyle6 [1]: http://www.10greekstreet.com/about.php

te_chris• 12 years ago

I just like how they're presenting the true globetotter, super rich lifestyle: Getting notifications for dinner in London while you brood by Sydney harbour. I wonder if it integrates with the gulfstream?

nilkn2• 12 years ago

Wow, that looks bad on a small wrist. That's basically a deal breaker for me. I also think that default watchface looks very tacky, though I'm sure that can be changed.

The Moto 360 suffered the same problem. Here's what it looks like in a promotional shot:

http://www.droid-life.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/moto-36...

And here's what it actually looks like on someone with thin wrists:

http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-EK187_PTECH__G_...

TheTaO3• 12 years ago

In the early day of these smart watches they are going to be a bit larger as the technology matures. Even the iWatch is going to look bigger and the newly announced Microsoft Band.

vxNsr2• 12 years ago

I've seen the moto 360 in person, on a smallish wrist (compared to mine) and it looked fine, I only noticed it was the 360, because the screen was off.

Somehow it looks thicker in the pictures than it does on your wrist, then again I don't really care because I got a WP which won't work with any of google's stuff D:

aceperry2• 12 years ago

The moto looks pretty good on the thin wrist of a girl though.

jypepin• 12 years ago

Wow that is bad. I found that watch looking pretty good on LG's website, but from gizmodo's picture, it seems like the screen is low res and super pixelated. Even DEC / JUN are hard to read =\

72deluxe7• 12 years ago

Yes, the screen didn't look great in the Gizmodo review. He summed it up nicely with : "it just becomes a >£200 way of reminding you that yes, you own a smartphone."

The use-cases of "dictating a message whilst walking down the street" is a bit odd too - do you want people talking to their wrists all the time? It'll like being in a never-ending episode of Knight Rider.

huhtenberg• 12 years ago

Why do these product images, all of them, look like a rushed photoshop slap-on hack? Does it mean that LG views this watch as an experimental throw-away project or something?

paulftw• 12 years ago

I think LG, like others, is struggling to push this product out in time for Christmas shopping. Won't be surprised if they ship it with rather obvious hardware or design issues.

That "where to buy / coming soon" image is not clickable for me, though it looks like an input field. Anyone else tried using it to find a pre-order form?

koyote• 12 years ago

It's already available in the UK and has been for a couple of weeks now.

listic• 12 years ago

In all the smartwatch reviews I have read, I fail to see the high-level overview: what kinds of tasks should I be able to accomplish with this kind of device, at all?

Are Android Wear devices only usable in a vicinity of my Android phone or can I use them without one? Could I use them with an iPhone, Firefox OS phone, Surface Pro tablet, 3G modem or any Wi-Fi source (Moto 360 does have Wi-Fi)?

Do Android Wear devices need apps written specifically for them, and/or specific support in a tablet/phone app. Say, I know there is a VK app for Android, but I'm not sure about smartwatch support. Should I be getting VK notifications (or whatever watch is good for) by default?

Could I pair a Wi-Fi-equipped smartwatch with a Bluetooth headset and get rid of a phone, with smartwatch providing VoIP connectivity over Wi-Fi?

What kinds (if any) of non-default configurations can I expect to use a device like that? (default being pairing it with an Android phone and a specifically supported app)

itp3• 12 years ago

I'm not sure if you're asking because you legitimately don't know, or just underscoring how terrible some of the marketing and advertising for these devices has been. If it's the former, though, a lot of the info you're asking about can be found online[0]. In general, though, the primary mode of operation of an Android Wear device is to work with the existing notification system of an Android device, so most apps should automatically have some reflection on the watch. If they take advantage of Android notification actions, you may be able to interact to a degree with them right off of the watch.

Android Wear devices don't (as far as I know) work with non-Android phones because non-Android phones don't give them the required integration with the notifications and applications.

[0] http://www.android.com/wear/

TheTaO3• 12 years ago

The Microsoft Band at least seems to be more targeted towards health focused users although it can do all of the smart things that these smart watches do.

http://www.microsoft.com/Microsoft-Band

userbinator2• 12 years ago

In general, though, the primary mode of operation of an Android Wear device is to work with the existing notification system of an Android device

In other words, these smartwatches are not a replacement for an Android smartphone.

On the other hand (no pun intended), the Chinese have been creating smartwatchphones for a while now, which are fully-functional Android smartphones in a slightly bigger watch-sized casing.

minusSeven• 12 years ago

I guess he is talking about reviews that lack all such information and rather talk about how exactly it looks on your wrist rather than talking about what exactly you could do with one.

I have observed this too and makes me think reading smart watch reviews rather redundant.

penetrarthur• 12 years ago

I own a moto360 one for almost a month now. You are probably not going to say "ok google" all the time so most of the features that require your voice are pretty useless. To be honest I only use them when driving. What I really use it for is: 1) Check who is calling. If I am on a meeting or otherwise busy I can drop the call. 2) Read messages/gmail(full message)/whatsapp etc. I will have to get the phone out of the pocket only if I need to respond. 3) Notifications/reminders/weather reports etc.

dozy• 12 years ago

Plenty of use cases...heres one: I've been loving my 360 for exercise. Not only for the step counting (and the Asus Wear watch has GPS I believe).

I've always taken issue with carrying a phone around with me while running. With the 360 (and the latest update), you can pair with bluetooth headphones and play music that you've synced from your phone. And obviously since it's a watch, I can time myself. I can then sync my interval timing results, etc.

Regarding your request for a high-level overview...it's an extension of the Android platform designed specifically for wearables, is it really that hard to see the potential? Take what you know about Android and what it can do, and Wear is that + APIs for tiny UIs + an sync-focused abstraction layer on top of bluetooth pairing. Additionally, consider not only that the screen is tiny, but the HCI ramifications/opportunities given that it's on your wrist, or ankle, or whatever. AFAIK, you can build a Wear device with any hardware you want. The models we're seeing right now are leaving out things like GPS and LTE radios for obvious cost and battery life concerns. When I think about what Wear could do, that's the context I consider.

snarkyturtle• 12 years ago

I find it weird that these smartwatches don't have GPS built in them. I feel like if you were to use it on your runs/bikes, you'd prefer to just be able to take your watch rather than having both your phone and watch.

I could definitely see how excluding it would help price and battery life, but to have a selling point be "it helps with fitness" but with a caveat of "oh, but you have to bring your phone with you too" kinda kills the whole appeal.

miguelrochefort• 12 years ago

The Microsoft Band is for you.

sliverstorm• 12 years ago

Excluding GPS doesn't just help battery life. GPS is a power monster.

anonova• 12 years ago

This. It seems like most people don't realize how much power GPS requires, especially for it to be on 24/7. Even advanced sport watches (e.g., Garmin's Forerunner 620) don't last half a day with it on.

itp3• 12 years ago

Android Wear devices don't require GPS, and you're right that most (so far) don't, but the new Sony Smartwatch 3 does have it (and the platform does support it when it's available[0]).

[0] http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2014/10/gps-on-androi...

modeless• 12 years ago

There are different watches for different people. The Sony one has GPS. You can track runs and listen to music over bluetooth without your phone.

http://www.sonymobile.com/us/products/smartwear/smartwatch-3...

_almosnow• 12 years ago

On the 4th or 5th tab, the note ...

"Idea for an all new park that delivers fun, friendship and safety for children of all ages."

... made me wonder, what have I done today to change the world in a good way? [Spoiler alert: sarcasm]

eps• 12 years ago

Perhaps a very naive question - how hackable is this?

I mean how hard is it to strip Android off all its phone-home Google goodness and have just the kernel, basic OS services with complete root access? I used to do a lot of embedded work, but I have to plead almost complete ignorance of Android. This watch though ... damn ... so many possibilities for making such a nice toy out of it.

mbesto• 12 years ago

Given the amount of big brand smartwatches that keep surfacing but don't seem to be gaining traction (or at least doesn't appear so) I get the feeling they are going to go the way of tablets - in other words "there isn't a tablet market, there's an iPad market".

discodave• 12 years ago

Except at this point we don't even know that the iWatch will be successful.

sigmar• 12 years ago

"there isn't a tablet market, there's an iPad market".

This was true in 2010, but things change. Apple's tablet market share is at 23%

http://www.macrumors.com/2014/10/30/apple-ipad-market-share-...

r00fus• 12 years ago

What about profit share? Are any major tablet vendors aside from Apple actually making decent profits?

bronson• 12 years ago

"Be aware of the recent state of your (current) health by monitoring your heart's pulse"

"Stay fit, keep control of your body"

"Please adjust your browser for the optimal service"

Guessing this is a translation of another site?

72deluxe7• 12 years ago

All you base are belong to us!

aaronbrethorst• 12 years ago

    Facebook

    Alice Yang tagged you
    in a post: Jon, check
    out this song from
    utube, it's aweso

http://www.lg.com/global/gwatch/index.html#outdoorstyle3

Pass, thanks.

nkozyra2• 12 years ago

Just chilling on the beach with my smart phone and sweater.

There very definition of not "getting" the beach.

cujo• 12 years ago

That's Cape Cod style.

bane• 12 years ago

not to defend the lousy advert too much, but up in the Northern Coastal areas, we have beaches too, and they're nice to go to even when it's a little chilly (actually the next month or two is actually my favorite time to go to the beach, temperature in 50s and 60s, nobody there, wildlife is out in droves migrating or fattening up for winter)...

but then again, he's wearing shorts so....

hsod• 12 years ago

Seems pretty narrow-minded. There are many ways to enjoy a beach. A surfer might say the same thing about you just sitting on a towel (or whatever you do at the beach).

MartynX• 12 years ago

They all scroll.

132• 12 years ago

There's something rather odd about showing off what I would consider to be a massive design flaw. They haven't worked out how to design interfaces for a circle yet, so everything just gets chopped up.

jboy55• 12 years ago

Samsung did this when they first introduced their watch. In the ad for it, the guy is holding his phone in his right hand, his watch on his left wrist 'rings' letting him know who it was, then he proceeds to answer on the phone, that he's still holding.

If the first ad for your product basically says, "I'm useless", then I think you're doomed.

I kinda wish Apple was just trolling the tech world with the possibility of their watch. Just watching their competitors pour money into something with no real use case. Probably in 5-10 years there will be a buzzfeed article, "13.2 reasons you know you grew up in the 10's when..." and number 3.7 will be, "You remember those useless smart watches".

billforsternz2• 12 years ago

It's interesting how the advertisements for tech these days all feature beautiful people in their 20s interacting with Facebook + Youtube + Twitter etc. Whilst all saying "awesome" to each other. Doesn't seem long ago that all the ads had beautiful people in their 30s sending each other messages about meeting sales and marketing for a presentation at 11, then taking a long lunch with their spouse, as well as updating their portfolio, and maybe buying tickets to a Nicks game. An actual physical game in meatspace. How retro can you get?

Tyrannosaurs2• 12 years ago

That's harsh, it's more versatile than that - there's a beautiful person in their 20s checking the stock price while on a yacht, there's a beautiful person in their 20s out running, a beautiful person in their 20s making a note of an idea while in an amazing office.

There really is no limit to what beautiful people in their 20s can do with this sort of product.

cgriswald2• 12 years ago

Not just beautiful, but white and disproportionately left-handed.

72deluxe7• 12 years ago

Hahaha that made me laugh out loud. I noticed that too - what a way to sell a product by showing trimmed messages.

I also notice that some of the notifications use a pale grey text on a white background; unreadable inside, massively unreadable in daylight

72deluxe7• 12 years ago

I also enjoyed them getting notifications for the weather whilst on a boat with the sky above them, looking into sunshine.

Surely they can SEE the weather? Why look at the notification for it?

coolcfan• 12 years ago

Why it needs to show these texts un-cropped when you can just scroll?

notatoad• 12 years ago

wow, that's an obnoxious website. It won't show anything except a promt to resize my browser window for "optimal service". my browser is covering half a 27" 2560x1440 screen, i think it's probably big enough to show a picture of a wristwatch

fcoury• 12 years ago

The website is horrible. I hate that it dictates how your browser should be sized, with the brilliant text "Please adjust your BROWER for optimal service." - http://cl.ly/image/2i3w2y3h3K35

peter_l_downs• 12 years ago

It's using some weird kind of JS resizing, too – window size doesn't matter but aspect ratio does. Side scrolling instead of vertical, and almost all of the text content is contained in background images. Just terrible.

hiou• 12 years ago

I wish someone would flip the paradigm upside down. Put the whole computer in the watch and then have a dumb screen the size of a credit card that fits in your wallet. You can use that for talking on the phone, browsing the web etc. Make the watch primary and the big screen secondary.

CrazedGeek• 12 years ago

A watch like that would probably have battery life of about 0.3 femtoseconds.

ufmace• 12 years ago

It'd be cool, but the technology is probably a few generations away.

mxfh• 12 years ago

The Skeuomorph is strong with this one.

Why isn't there a single chronograph type clock face that displays the current date in an easily readable form and does't clutter month and day of month all other the place? It's just feels quite unimaginative to stick to the limitations of an mechanical apparatus when you're using a digital display.

Is it possible to have some kind of reflective semi-translucent high contrast High-PPI E-Ink with with a P-OLED Backlight? Or have it flippable?

puccal• 12 years ago

This page makes 360 separate requests and loads 55MB of assets. They did not minify or concatenate assets. It disables itself unless it is used at specific aspect ratios. It disables scrolling and requires clicking small triangles to navigate sideways.

Just so you can look at photos that are all fake.

Fire the designers.

twelvechairs• 12 years ago

It also ordered me to rotate my screen 'for optimal service' (in fact I received no 'service').

Suboptimal to say the least.

baddox• 12 years ago

You looked at the page, and you now know about the product. That's likely true of thousands of other people. Give the designers a bonus.

Shad0w59• 12 years ago

CAMERA None

Such a strange feature to highlight.

microtherion• 12 years ago

Judging from the heated reception that Google Glass got in certain places, it appears that wearable cameras are a mixed blessing.

72deluxe7• 12 years ago

It probably stops incessant questions of "so does it have a camera"? Better to be specific than ambiguous.

slipperyp• 12 years ago

Call me a nitpicker and you'd be right, but the screenshots in this[1] and other ads[2] where they showcase this watch for GPS navigation while on a bike (or motorcycle) where the watch is not doing a 90 degree rotation on the content area so you can read it while your hands are on some handlebars really bugs me. I guess it bugs me more than some model getting on a motorcycle wearing what looks like a blazer with no helmet or gloves, too.

But to make this comment, say, 20% hn worthy, can someone explain whether it's unrealistic that I think the accelerometer should be able to figure out the "holding handlebars with forward velocity" scenario and orient the display properly?

[1] http://www.lg.com/global/gwatch/index.html#urbanstyle5 [2] https://play.google.com/store/devices/details?id=motorola_mo...

cronin101• 12 years ago

BE AWARE OF THE RECENT STATE OF YOUR (CURRENT) HEALTH

That's... quite interestingly worded. It seems to suggest that it only supports repeated single readings on-demand, a shame for sport enthusiasts who would rather not be talking into their watch during the action.

aceperry2• 12 years ago

The fashion type ad is very good, and very different from most of the other smart watch ads that I've seen. The other ads focus on the watch and technology. The LG ad emphasizes the fashion aspect of the watch and is more consumer oriented which is probably the best thing to do when expanding the market to beyond the early adopters and techno types.

72deluxe7• 12 years ago

Those photos are massively overexposed or have some strange HDR processing on them, but it's lovely to see material textures and facial hair in such detail.

The one photo to sell "checking your stocks" is a funny one. "I'm on a yacht looking to the horizon and I NEED to know whether I should BUY BUY BUY or SELL SELL SELL". What a witty photo.

jacquesm• 12 years ago

You could probably apply that reasoning to 99% or so of all text messages and facebook status updates.

Raphmedia• 12 years ago

Product apart, this website is horrible. I can't scroll with my mouse. When I opened it on my vertical screen, all I had was a white background with "please adjust your screen"( http://www.lg.com/global/gwatch/images/common/rotate_bg.jpg )...

That's horrible. I had never seen this before.

tommyd• 12 years ago

Was going to say the same thing, saw that both on my iPhone and on my desktop (with a half screen width browser). Way to piss users off.

lmedinas• 12 years ago

I haven't seen the LG G Watch R nor the 360 but from the specs the LG G W R would be the one i would buy.

A better and more efficient processor makes things better on the LG.

LG G Watch R

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