LG Launches G Watch R Smartwatch With Traditional Circular Watch Face

LG has launched its second smartwatch of 2014, with the G Watch R featuring a more traditional circular watch face.

Ahead of the IFA 2014 tech conference taking place in Germany next week, Samsung has already revealed its latest smartwatch - the Gear S - which is capable of making phone calls independently of a smartphone thanks to a 3G modem.

While the new Samsung smartwatch uses Tizen software, LG is using Google's wearable-specific software known as Android Wear.

The G Watch R is the South Korean company's second smartwatch of 2014, following the launch of the G Watch a few months ago. That watch has come in for some negative media coverage after a hardware issue caused some of the charging pins on the watch's underside to corrode, causing injury to a number of customers.

Price and release date

The G Watch R will go on sale later in the year LG says but the company has yet to reveal a price for the device.

The G Watch features a 1.3in circular plastic OLED display with a resolution of 320 x 320 pixels.

The circular display mirrors the one seen on Motorola's Moto 360 which is due to be officially launched next week. However unlike the Moto 360, the G Watch R's display does not feature a 'dead zone' which Motorola says was necessary to include light sensors.

The G Watch R will feature a 1.2GHz Snapdragon 400 processor, 4GB of storage and 512MB of RAM.

Battery life is likely to be very similar to the day-and-a-half afforded by the G Watch with the new smartwatch featuring a 410mAh battery, compared to the 400mAh one featured in the original.