LG has been one of the most faithful Android Wear companies since the line of wearables was first launched, and it looks like the company is prepping yet another smartwatch for 2017. The Federal Communications Commission has issued certification for at least one device this year, but some rumors suggest that we may actually end up with as many as four LG smartwatches.
Unfortunately, the documents reveal very little information about what we should expect to see from LG’s upcoming smartwatch or smartwatches, but it did give us one detail — the watch will be round.
That’s because a few screenshots were provided as part of the listing, and all of those screenshots were images of a round smartwatch. Nothing in the screenshots really gave much away — they just depicted how to navigate to regulatory information, as well as the regulatory information itself. Based on the screenshots, we can also safely say that the device will run Android Wear.
The screenshots follow news from last year that suggested LG was prepping four new watches, to be called the LG Watch Style, Watch Pro, Watch Force, and Watch Sole. The news was discovered through trademark filings by Dutch website GSMInfo, but the names were really all that we know about the devices.
While we don’t know much official information about the watch, we can certainly speculate. It’s likely that the device will run Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear 2100 processor, which promises to offer as much as 25 percent better battery efficiency than the Snapdragon 400, which can be found in many older smartwatches. The chip also supports 3G and 4G connectivity, so it’s possible that LG’s new watch or watches will need a data plan as well, to allow them to function perfectly fine without a connected smartphone.
It makes sense that companies like LG would want to launch multiple devices — companies are increasingly realizing that watches are a fashion statement, and as such, the “one-style-fits-all” approach that worked in the smartphone industry isn’t necessarily as effective in the smartwatch industry.
