LG Urbane talk

Jonny Kansas

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We've got a thread for the G watch, so why not the urbane now?

Just got mine today. I'm upgrading from the G watch.

First, @PereDroid asked about the app "Find my phone" and wifi. I setup cloud sync & wifi on my watch, left my phone in the front corner of my house & went out the other side & to the opposite corner of the yard to fill my bird feeder. When I exited the house, I was notified by find my phone. It took wifi a little but to kick in, but it did &, from what I can tell, I successfully sent 2 emojis via my watch through hangouts. They didn't show on the watch in conversation view, but showed on my phone with appropriate timestamp info. I did not walk far enough away to lose wifi on the watch & see if find my phone alerted again, but the disconnect icon disappeared when it switched to wifi, so I would assume it might still work. Will do more testing later.

This could be updates to Google now, but I left the house earlier. As I did, I told my watch to remind me to take the trash out when I got home. While I was at my destination, the card came up for it & I thought that it had failed/notified me too soon. Not uncommon in my experience. However, I got home, walked through the living room, & was about to take my shoes off when the watch notified me to take the trash out.

The heart rate monitor is pretty dang accurate in the one real test I did. I held my right wrist with my left pointer & second finger, with my Note 4 in my right hand to test it too, & had the watch check my pulse as well on my left wrist. According to the note 4 it was 105. According to the watch it was 98. According to my count, it was around 100. I have a history of tachycardia & had just finished a smoke on the drive home, walked briskly into the house, then gathered the trash & took it all out to the curb.

It does feel like an upgrade, but I'd say more like a 1.5th generation than 2nd. I'm pleased with the purchase & excited to try out some of the sweet round faces that just got too tiny on the Square G watch.

Drawing emojis works as advertised, but I haven't figured out how to draw the poop properly. I got a cheeseburger, snowman, & other options.

Quick access to apps & contacts is a welcomed improvement for sure. I downloaded the LG call app for initiating calls from the watch. Not really sure how practical that is since there's no speaker on the watch, so I'll be picking my phone up right away unless it launches in speaker phone mode. Will play with this later as well.

Flicking of the wrist to scroll cards takes a bit of practice until the card showed up to explain it. Another thing I might not use much, but could be hand in certain situations.

Feel free to share your experiences with the device as well &/or ask questions if you have them.

Sent from my Note 4

Update: @nateccnn has a great write-up of his experiences as a "newbie" AW user, found here LG Watch Urbane hour by hour review from a newbie Android Forum at DroidForums.net

Update 2: My findings testing the wifi functionality of the watch from several posts down-
Just experimented more with Wifi at work. I'm quite impressed. We've got a VERY large building. 81 resident rooms, spread out in an almost figure-8 layout on one level.

First of all, I set the watch up to make sure it'd connect to wifi at work. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it actually successfully connected to my public network, which usually won't let you do anything without acknowledging our terms on the splash page. I saw no splash page on the watch or the phone, but the watch said it was connected, so I decided to make my rounds around the building to check on all of my thin clients and gather serial numbers for all of our Xerox machines, because they HAVE to have that when we call and we didn't have a comprehensive list.

I get a ways down the hall and chat with the Ward Clerk for a bit and Find my phone notifies me of the disconnect. So far so good. As we're talking, I glance down because it had vibrated again and see that the disconnect icon isn't showing anymore. I walk the rest of the way down the 120ft hallway and go into the report room to check the fax machine. While there, I drew an emoji and sent it to my fiance. At this point, if you picture a square, you get the idea of the section of building I'm in. I'm straight down one side of that square from my office, most definitely not on bluetooth anymore.

Then, I make my way CLEAR across the whole building to the farthest nurse station from my office. On the way, I send a voice text, "Testing on wifi 925" is how it comes out. (making note of the time to check the timestamp upon my return to my office.) Didn't even make it 1/4 of the way back o my office and she texted me back "huh?", so I fired off another voice text explaining.

There was a bit of a hiccup moving between APs on the open mesh network. I was notified a few more times that my watch had disconnected. Still, it connected again quick enough. I got a like through tapatalk on a post while I was way far away as well.

It did take some time to reconnect via bluetooth once I returned to my office, which I get because I know that the phone waits so much longer each time to retry the connection to the watch when it drops. I setup smart lock last night, so I had to enter my PIN a few times. Obviously, I was checking it all out. In the AW app, it said my watch was connected, but in the smart lock settings, it said it wasn't connected, which makes total sense because it hadn't switched back to bluetooth.

All in all, I can see how the functionality would be handy, especially in my case if I leave my phone in my office or elsewhere in the building. At least I'd still have some access. Kinda makes me wish more apps had info viewed right on the watch vs having to open on the phone.
 
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Sajo

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^^ Enjoy your new watch Jonny! Thanks for the initial review. Not sure what I am doing next but it will not be until later this year.
 
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Jonny Kansas

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Thanks guys. Feels a bit snazzier. Won't be my last one, but at least it's got the extra bells & whistles to play with. The tech is definitely headed in the right direction imo.

Sent from my Note 4
 
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Jonny Kansas

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Don't think it looks too huge either. But then, I've worn some pretty large watches in my time.
e0b0fa33e874e4c26a07d6ff1bbd73a9.jpg


Sent from my Note 4
 
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Jonny Kansas

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I'm thinking a metal band is in my future for this one for sure.

Also does the fancy charging face, though I intend to put it in theater mode at night as I did with the G watch. Don't need the extra illumination.
4597f0b53bd4abdc3fe0d0ea9eb0a9b2.jpg


Sent from my Note 4
 

cr6

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Congrats, very nice Jonny!
I really like the leather band....looks great. How do you like it compared to your previous smartwatch? Much better, about the same, too early to tell? More functionality? Longer battery life?
It definitely looks classy and more "high end" comparatively speaking.

S5 tap'n
 
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Jonny Kansas

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I like it better for sure aesthetically. I can see the wifi being of use around the house when I leave the phone out of range. And the heart rate sensor makes more sense to me than the one on my note 4.

Still too early to tell on the rest since I only got it a bit over 6 hours ago, but I'm definitely pleased with the purchase so far & don't think that'll change any time soon.

The leather band actually looks a lot like the one I bought for the G watch. It's nice, but I'm thinking a metal one will put this one over the edge for class. Will rock the leather one for a bit though. It's stiff, so I want to at least give it time to break in a bit before abandoning it.

Sent from my Note 4
 
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Awesome! I like metal bands too. My Fossil (dress watch) has a metal band but my Timex (work watch) is leather, so I like both. New leather does take awhile to break in though.
Look forward to hearing your thoughts on this device over the coming weeks.

S5 tap'n
 

mountainbikermark

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We've got a thread for the G watch, so why not the urbane now?

Just got mine today. I'm upgrading from the G watch.

First, @PereDroid asked about the app "Find my phone" and wifi. I setup cloud sync & wifi on my watch, left my phone in the front corner of my house & went out the other side & to the opposite corner of the yard to fill my bird feeder. When I exited the house, I was notified by find my phone. It took wifi a little but to kick in, but it did &, from what I can tell, I successfully sent 2 emojis via my watch through hangouts. They didn't show on the watch in conversation view, but showed on my phone with appropriate timestamp info. I did not walk far enough away to lose wifi on the watch & see if find my phone alerted again, but the disconnect icon disappeared when it switched to wifi, so I would assume it might still work. Will do more testing later.

This could be updates to Google now, but I left the house earlier. As I did, I told my watch to remind me to take the trash out when I got home. While I was at my destination, the card came up for it & I thought that it had failed/notified me too soon. Not uncommon in my experience. However, I got home, walked through the living room, & was about to take my shoes off when the watch notified me to take the trash out.

The heart rate monitor is pretty dang accurate in the one real test I did. I held my right wrist with my left pointer & second finger, with my Note 4 in my right hand to test it too, & had the watch check my pulse as well on my left wrist. According to the note 4 it was 105. According to the watch it was 98. According to my count, it was around 100. I have a history of tachycardia & had just finished a smoke on the drive home, walked briskly into the house, then gathered the trash & took it all out to the curb.

It does feel like an upgrade, but I'd say more like a 1.5th generation than 2nd. I'm pleased with the purchase & excited to try out some of the sweet round faces that just got too tiny on the Square G watch.

Drawing emojis works as advertised, but I haven't figured out how to draw the poop properly. I got a cheeseburger, snowman, & other options.

Quick access to apps & contacts is a welcomed improvement for sure. I downloaded the LG call app for initiating calls from the watch. Not really sure how practical that is since there's no speaker on the watch, so I'll be picking my phone up right away unless it launches in speaker phone mode. Will play with this later as well.

Flicking of the wrist to scroll cards takes a bit of practice until the card showed up to explain it. Another thing I might not use much, but could be hand in certain situations.

Feel free to share your experiences with the device as well &/or ask questions if you have them.

Sent from my Note 4
On my Fit I have the call app set to turn on speakerphone when it answers if I don't have a Bluetooth earpiece connected at the moment.
Can you please post back after you've left Wi-Fi on a while if it consumes a huge amount of battery? I know it's gonna be a couple of days to see its battery personality but I'm intrigued by how Android is handing the elephant in the room, that being an extra radio battery consumption.
Glad you're liking the new watch.

Support Our Troops !!!
<><
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Sajo

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Qucik question for you @Jonny Kansas. What is the firmware version on your new Urbane. I read somewhere that it was going to be the first AW watch shipped with the new OS to allow the wrist flip, emoji drawing, etc. Is the Urbane 5.1?
 
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Jonny Kansas

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Just experimented more with Wifi at work. I'm quite impressed. We've got a VERY large building. 81 resident rooms, spread out in an almost figure-8 layout on one level.

@PereDroid might be interested in my findings, as he was asking about the functionality in another thread.

First of all, I set the watch up to make sure it'd connect to wifi at work. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it actually successfully connected to my public network, which usually won't let you do anything without acknowledging our terms on the splash page. I saw no splash page on the watch or the phone, but the watch said it was connected, so I decided to make my rounds around the building to check on all of my thin clients and gather serial numbers for all of our Xerox machines, because they HAVE to have that when we call and we didn't have a comprehensive list.

I get a ways down the hall and chat with the Ward Clerk for a bit and Find my phone notifies me of the disconnect. So far so good. As we're talking, I glance down because it had vibrated again and see that the disconnect icon isn't showing anymore. I walk the rest of the way down the 120ft hallway and go into the report room to check the fax machine. While there, I drew an emoji and sent it to my fiance. At this point, if you picture a square, you get the idea of the section of building I'm in. I'm straight down one side of that square from my office, most definitely not on bluetooth anymore.

Then, I make my way CLEAR across the whole building to the farthest nurse station from my office. On the way, I send a voice text, "Testing on wifi 925" is how it comes out. (making note of the time to check the timestamp upon my return to my office.) Didn't even make it 1/4 of the way back to my office and she texted me back "huh?", so I fired off another voice text explaining.

There was a bit of a hiccup moving between APs on the open mesh network. I was notified a few more times that my watch had disconnected. Still, it connected again quick enough. I got a like through tapatalk on a post while I was way far away as well.

It did take some time to reconnect via bluetooth once I returned to my office, which I get because I know that the phone waits so much longer each time to retry the connection to the watch when it drops. I setup smart lock last night, so I had to enter my PIN a few times. Obviously, I was checking it all out. In the AW app, it said my watch was connected, but in the smart lock settings, it said it wasn't connected, which makes total sense because it hadn't switched back to bluetooth.

All in all, I can see how the functionality would be handy, especially in my case if I leave my phone in my office or elsewhere in the building. At least I'd still have some access. Kinda makes me wish more apps had info viewed right on the watch vs having to open on the phone.

On my Fit I have the call app set to turn on speakerphone when it answers if I don't have a Bluetooth earpiece connected at the moment.
Can you please post back after you've left Wi-Fi on a while if it consumes a huge amount of battery? I know it's gonna be a couple of days to see its battery personality but I'm intrigued by how Android is handing the elephant in the room, that being an extra radio battery consumption.
Glad you're liking the new watch.

Support Our Troops !!!
<><
Beast Mode 4

You can't force the watch to connect and stay connected to wifi. When you first launch into the menu to select a network, it will connect, but it always defaults to a BT connection when it's available and turns wifi completely off. There's also a setting to set "Power Save" for wifi. That can be anywhere from 15-120 minutes. 120 is the default if my memory is right. I don't think I changed it and that's what it's set on. Will be harder to test battery life using wifi for an extended period of time, but I'll work something out. Either I'll hide my phone in my car some time or sit outside and play on my tablet the way I usually do my phone and leave my phone far enough in the house that I can't get a BT connection.

Qucik question for you @Jonny Kansas. What is the firmware version on your new Urbane. I read somewhere that it was going to be the first AW watch shipped with the new OS to allow the wrist flip, emoji drawing, etc. Is the Urbane 5.1?
That's part of what sold me on it, aside from the look of the device. I could've done without the wifi, though it should prove useful in certain situations, but I liked the idea of better access to apps and contacts and the ability to draw an emoji. Could never get it to create one with voice and think it'll be easier to quick reply with a face by doodling on the watch than talking to my wrist in certain public situations.
Android Wear version: 1.1.1.1864693
Google Play Services: 7.3.34
Android OS: 5.1.1

I didn't check it on first boot. It got an update after initial setup.
 
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