Android Wear now supports cellular

Android Wear has now added support for mobile to its range of wireless networks. The wearable gadget maker already offers support for Bluetooth and wifi.

The announcement was made on the Android Official Blog and the first Android Wear watch to support cellular communications is the LG Watch Urbane 2nd Edition LTE.

Product Manager for Android Wear Peter Ludwig explained the advantages of this new type of machine to machine communications. “No more worrying about Bluetooth or wifi, your watch will automatically switch to a cellular connection when you’re out of range,” he said.

The scope of the data communications achievable will be subject to the limits of the 480 x 480 P-OLED display. The watch also contains a hear rate monitor which, technically, could be connected to medical health monitoring service, subject to their availability. In the US customers can already buy the LG Watch Urbane 2nd Edition from AT&T and Verizon and an international launch is promised, ‘within the coming months’.

Demand for connected watches is high, according to the New York Times which reported that on November 10th that queues outside the TAG Heuer store on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue  stretched ‘down the block’, as watch enthusiasts clamoured for a sight of the first real luxury competitor to the Apple Watch. For aesthetic reasons there are no “Intel Inside” stickers on the watch face, but the TAG Heuer Connected  is powered by an Intel chip set set and has a preconfigured Google platform.

In March Telecoms.com reported that TAG Heuer, Intel and Google had formed a partnership to take on Apple in developing smartwatches.

Speaking at the Baselworld watch trade show LVMH watch division president Claude Biver said companies like TAG Heuer have to use adapt in order to defend their customer base from being colonised by technology companies and Android Wear would be its weapon of choice.