It wasn’t very long ago we at The Connected Planet wrote about the LG’s Apple Watch competitor the Urbane. The intrepid people over at iFixit have torn down this heavyweight hopeful to see what firepower it’s packing so let’s take a look.
Off went the back side of the case so we could get a better look at the motherboard below. Of course the Snapdragon 400 SoC was there and so was the 512MB of SK Hynix RAM. Sharing space with the processor was the Qualcomm PM8226 PMIC and Broadcom BCM4343 integrated communications module.
On the underside of the motherboard is a Synaptics S3526B touch controller handling touch screen inputs. Wrist and body movement is translated by an Invensense M651 6-axis accelerometer and gyro. Assisting the 6-axis sensors with direction is an Asahi Kasei AK8963 3-axis compass so you will never get lost.
The LG Watch Urbane has all of the hardware you could want in a high-end smart watch, the luxurious looking case, gorgeous P-OLED display, and an excellent bit of hardware inside. What exactly is the Urbane lacking? The exotic cache of the Apple Watch is what is lacking. That bit of specialness the Apple Watch has is hard to come by in the fast paced and disposable world of wearables.
