LG announces carrier billing LG Pay but withdraws LTE Smart Watch

South Korean electronics giant LG has taken one step forward and one step back in the wearable technology race. In the week that LG unveiled its new carrier billing service LG Pay, it announced that technical issues had forced it to cancel the planned launch of the Watch Urbane 2nd Edition LTE.

“Late in the quality assurance process for the LG Watch Urbane 2nd Edition LTE, our engineers were made aware of a hardware issue which affects the day-to-day functionality of the device,” LG said, in a statement to blog Android Police. Further investigation of the dysfunction persuaded management to cancel the rollout of the Urbane 2nd Edition LTE, as a consequence of ‘the complicated nature of the issue’.

In October Telecoms.com reported how LG moved its LGWatch Urbane range from running on its own proprietary operating system to adopt Google’s Android Wear platform. The Urbane LTE 2 was mooted to be the first Android Wear smartwatch connected for mobile data with multiple functions and the ability to place phone calls. LG gave no details on the technical issues and did not elaborate on whether it might revert to using its own proprietary operating system.

Meanwhile, the proposed launch of the electronics manufacturer’s carrier billing service LG Pay was announced on its LGMobile Facebook page. “We have partnered with Shinhan Card and KB Kookmin Card to prepare for the launch of LG Pay,” LG said. With the partners being Korean based banks, the service is unlikely to be extended outside of Korea initially. LG gave no specific dates for the official launch of the service.

LG Pay would be the fourth carrier billing service on the market, in addition to Apply Pay, Android Pay and Samsung Pay, but it will be less appealing without a supporting smart watch.