Android Wear can switch to LTE, works without your smartphone

Your next (or first) Android wearable needs not for Bluetooth or Wifi. Android Wear's cellular support has finally arrived, just as the first compatible watch starts to ship. LG'sWatch Urbane 2nd Edition crams an LTE radio beneath its circular 480 x 480 screen, with models that'll work on AT&T and Verizon — carriers that are both selling the watch in the US this week.


As noted before, these LTE-compatible watches will share phone numbers with your phone, but pack all that's necessary to work even when your phone is far, far away. As long as both watch and phone can connect to your carrier, LTE Android Wear devices will be able to send and receive messages, Google things, and run your favorite apps.

Taking calls is also doable if you like talking at your wrist. Google's own announcement highlights marathons and errand-running as examples where you might leave your phone behind, and as smartphones have expanded in size, for those of us that Must Be Connected At All Times, an LTE wearable might fill the gap nicely. AT&T starts selling the LG watch online today and in-store this Friday, while Verizon subscribers will be able to preorder starting today.

Watch the Nexus 6P go blow-for-blow with the iPhone 6S in a speed test [VIDEO]

The Snapdragon 810 in the Nexus 6P might not be the most popular chipset on the market, but it still is considered top end and it seems to perform wonderfully in phones which take proper advantage of it. Of course, not many phones take proper advantage of hardware like Nexus devices, which don’t have loads of bloat and custom UI elements to bog the experience down.


So, how does it fare up against the iPhone 6S? Well, quite impressively. DroidModderX put these two through a speed test gauntlet to see if any of the devices had a significant edge over the other. The speed test consisted of a simple procedure of jumping into apps and jumping out of them the moment they load. He then tested multitasking capabilities by opening those same apps in the same order to see if there were any forced refreshes for either of the phones.

The results? Quite nice. The Nexus 6P seemed to take the early lead, but the iPhone 6S was able to blow past it after the Angry Birds app took a few extra seconds to load. The iPhone 6S had as much as a 2 second lead by that point, but once the two devices hit the multitasking phase of the test the gap narrowed. The Nexus 6P actually ended up besting the iPhone 6S by the end of it, but only by a marginal 6/10ths of a second. Some suspect the iPhone 6S was only held back by Apple’s more drawn out animations, which is a fair point.