Android Wear Adds Cellular Support, Begs You To Leave Your Smartphone Home

This past spring, Google released a much-needed update to its Android Wear platform, one that added both gesture and Wi-Fi support. That latter feature meant that people would be able to send and receive messages on their watch or get quick info about who's calling as long as they were connected to a Wi-Fi network. Overall, it's a quite convenient feature.

Admittedly, though, few Android smartwatch wearers are going to be content with that. What if you want to go for a run? Unless your city happens to have city-wide Wi-Fi access, you're going to be left out of the loop until you get to a network. Cellular is clearly needed to help rectify that.

And cellular is what we'll soon be getting. Per a new Google blog post, the company mentions that the first company out of the gate with a cellular offering is LG, with its LG Watch Urbane 2nd Edition LTE. It sports a 480x480 resolution, and three buttons that will help you access important areas quick. Notably, though, it also allows you to take and receive calls right on the watch itself.

The LG Watch Urbane 2nd Edition LTE is being sold through Verizon and AT&T; at the latter, it's priced at $199.99 with a two-year contract.

It's important to note that a phone is not required for this to work; you can leave your house and simply connect to the network at large. As soon as you're back in range of an open Wi-Fi spot, the watch will switch over to save on data (we'd assume that could be configured to remain on cellular should you have an unlimited package.)

With cellular for Android Wear finally here, it seems likely that we'll see many competitors pop up at the upcoming CES event in January.