If you’re interested in getting either of LG’s latest “Made with our friends at Google” Watches and you live in Australia, we’re expecting nothing but bad luck for you, both now and ongoing. We’re relatively sure that due to the inclusion of LTE in the Watch Sport, it may never be officially offered here, and for reasons that make no sense, the same seems to have been applied to the LG Watch Style.
Typically, if you want a product from the US there are various avenues, however for the LG Watch Sport at least it’s only sold via the US Google store, AT&T and Verizon. Dan tried to buy one from the US store this morning as was thwarted by the payment validation. I think that for the foreseeable future, we may be stuck buying from the likes of the eBay extortionists. We’ve also looked at the watches sold by Verizon and AT&T and even if you’re buying outright, you have to get a data plan with it.
We will have to see what other carriers across the globe do as the watch rolls out to the other launch markets, being the UK, Canada, South Korea, South Africa, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Taiwan. Chris, Jason and I will be passing through UAE on our way to MWC in Barcelona, we’ll see what we can find.
The news for the LG Watch Style is a little better. With the watch having wider distribution channels, it won’t be long until it will show up for sale on importing sites. One such site already has the LG Watch Style up for pre-order. B&H Photo is rapidly becoming one of my favourite destinations for importing USA restricted technology. Right now you can pre-order the Watch Style for $325.86 AUD for the Silver and Titanium models, and $364.97 for the Rose Gold model. At present, the Silver and Rose Gold are both stocked with shipping to Australia starting at $46.29 AUD.
At a starting price of $372.15 AUD delivered, that’s actually not too bad. Unfortunately, LG and Google have inexplicably made the LG Watch Style basically undesirable, due to the lack of NFC and the 2 app buttons.
If however, you want the latest and greatest Android Wear watch and you have no intention of using Android Pay (which you should, seriously swap banks it’s worth it) and don’t want quick launch buttons for apps, like Android Pay, then this could be the watch for you.
Let us know where you see either watch for sale, we’ll do out best to quickly moderate comments with URL links so you can share the links.
