The first two Android Wear smartwatches that just hit the market here in the US and in some countries abroad today get the teardown treatment from our friends over at iFixit. That includes LG’s G Watch, which is now shipping from Google Play here in the US and landing in 12 countries worldwide starting today, as well as Samsung’s Gear Live that also just started shipping ahead of its expected July 8th shipping date.
There’s not much in terms of internal components that we already didn’t know, but the teardown does reward the LG G Watch with a slightly higher repairability score:
Interestingly enough, both watches took a page out of the Samsung Gear 2’s book with regard to external and internal design. We’re not saying that LG cloned Samsung’s creation, but there are marked similarities between the two… Yet despite the similarities, we found a few important tidbits supporting a higher repairability score for the LG G Watch. A cleaner internal design with fewer thin ribbon cables and glued-in flexible circuit boards means that working on a G unit will be a tad bit easier. Both watches did well; the Gear Live scored an excellent 8, but the G Watch hit a stellar 9. With that extra smidgen of repairability goodness, the LG G Watch might be a better buy for anyone who wants to keep their watch ticking an extra year or two.
iFixit notes that the G Watch’s 3.8 V, 400 mAh battery offers approximately a 33% edge over Samsung’s Gear Live’s 300 mAh battery. Also interesting is the fact that the teardown revealed a combo Bluetooth / Wi-Fi antenna for the Samsung Gear Live. Of course the Bluetooth functionality is something we already knew about, but whether or not this chip could allow Samsung to offer WiFi connectivity features in the future will require further investigation.
Check out the full tear downs for the LG G Watch and Samsung’s Gear Live.
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