The road to market for LG Watch Urbane Second Edition LTE has been as long and rocky as the product's name itself. The first Android Wear watch to be able to operate untethered from a mobile phone, it was supposed to ship at the end of last year but was held back for unspecfied technical problems. Now that it's out, The Verge has a review, and it's less than wildly … [Read more...]
[Updated] Omate Announces Carbon Fiber Rise LTE Smartwatch; Indiegogo Launches Dec 7
![[Updated] Omate Announces Carbon Fiber Rise LTE Smartwatch; Indiegogo Launches Dec 7](https://wearablesinsider.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2015/12/3-150x150.jpg)
LG may have had some trouble getting its LTE smartwatch out the door, but that doesn't seem to have hindered pioneer Omate. The company today announced a 48-hour Indiegogo campaign to pre-sell its Omate Rise LTE watch. The Omate Rise will run Android 5.1 (Lollipop) with a user-facing interface designed by Omate; the watch will connect with both Android and iOS apps using … [Read more...]
LG Kills the Urbane LTE, Citing Hardware Problem
LG today reportedly took the highly unusual step of canceling the launch of a product that was well into the preview window, citing unspecified hardware problems. The Urbane LTE was to have been the first untethered Android Wear watch, using a microSIM to connect to the Internet without the need for an intermediary smart phone. (There have been several other LTE … [Read more...]
Omate Announces TrueSmart Standalone Smartwatch Update
Omate was one of the first smartwatch companies, and carved its own path with standalone devices that used SIM chips and didn't need to be tethered to a smart phone. The company today announced its latest update: the TrueSmart+, based on Android 5.1 (Lollipop) and a custom UI. Apps for the watch will be downloadable from Omate's "OStore." A 1.5-inch touch screen is the main … [Read more...]
Million-Dollar Omate Joins Top Incubator, Moves to US
It's been a while since we've checked in with Omate, a very early French maker of smart watches. Two things made Omate interesting: it had raised more than $1 million in crowdfunding, and it was the first company to build a watch that included its own SIM card, and therefore didn't require a phone as a communications hub. The last we wrote about Omate, it was announcing the … [Read more...]
Omate Announces Omate X, a Notifications Smartwatch
Omate was one of the first companies (and possibly the very first) to make an untethered smartwatch -- one that had its own SIM card and didn't need a phone to connect to the outside world. The Omate Truesmart represented hard engineering, and most of the rest of the world went the easier route and put the communications intelligence in the phone and not the watch. The company … [Read more...]
WSJ Says Samsung Will Ship Wrist Communicator This Summer
The Wall Street Journal is saying that Samsung, which already has several bits of wristware in its product line, will come out this summer with a wrist-worn communicator that will not require a cellphone. Citing "people familiar with the company's plans," the Journal says the device will run the open-source Tizen operating system (like the Gear Fit and Gear 2, but unlike the … [Read more...]
Omate Shows Off the Million-Dollar TrueSmart Wristwear
We caught up Sunday with Laurent LePen, the CEO of Omate, at Mobile World Congress. He was showing off the first production models of the million-dollar Kickstarter project TrueSmart watch. Omate raised a million dollars for the TrueSmart on KickStarter, and the plan is to ship within a couple of months. The watch looks pretty chunky, about the size of one of those old … [Read more...]