LG electronics has officially launched its latest smartwatch, the Watch Urbane in India for a price tag of Rs. 30,000 ($475). At that price, it is twice as expensive as LG’s last generation G Watch R and is costlier than all other Android Wear devices currently on sale in the country. The device had already been listed on Amazon India for Rs. 29,990 ($471) on Monday after earlier rumors suggested that LG would launch the device in India at Rs. 35,000 ($550). Even though the launch price is lower than those initial rumors, it is still significantly higher than the smartwatch’s international pricing ranging from $349 in the US to $365 in LG’s home base of South Korea. There is no word at the moment on whether the smartwatch will be available through other online channels including the Google Play Store. The device currently being offered in India is the Wi-Fi only edition although, LG also has a 4G LTE edition that it offers internationally. There is no word at this time on the availability of that particular model in India.
The LG Watch Urbane was globally unveiled at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) held at Barcelona in March 2015 and comes with a stainless steel body with a genuine leather strap. The metallic body is available in two colors – Rose Gold and Silver. The Silver edition gets a black leather strap and the Gold one gets a brown strap to match the body. Unlike many other smartwatches available in the market, the strap on the Watch Urbane can be exchanged with any other leather, silicone or metal strap allowing a degree of personalization hitherto unseen on most smartwatches. The watch comes with a 1.3-inch circular P-OLED display with a 320 x 320 resolution, resulting in a 245 ppi. It is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 SoC with a 1.2 GHz quad-core processor and sports 512 MB of RAM and 4 GB of built-in storage. The watch comes with a Barometer, a 9-Axis (Gyroscope, Accelerometer, Compass) and a PPG (heart rate monitor) and its battery is rated at 410 mAh. The device also gets an IP67 rating for water and dust resistance. The device is one of the very first Android Wear devices to get the new Android Wear update, which brings better WiFi connectivity, gesture support, always-on apps to keep the display from going dark when running, and an improved user interface that makes launching favorite apps easier than ever before.