Little has been seen of webOS since LG acquired it from HP, aside from a few smart televisions. However, the dead-ish operating system has finally appeared in a device that people actually (somewhat) give a crap about: smartwatches. What’s more is that it actually looks pretty impressive and can do a lot of things that Android Wear can’t, not to mention it’s designed specifically for circular watches which eliminates many of the issues that Android Wear has with circular watches.
Of all the failed smartphone platforms I’ve seen over the years, webOS’s death was the most tragic because it really was a wonderfully intuitive platform that was especially good for multitasking. Ever since Palm got bought out by HP, which subsequently sold webOS to LG, the platform has basically been dead although it always pops up every now and then running on a TV or a washing machine. However, a great video of LG’s Watch Urbane LTE has me thinking that webOS might have a 17th life as a wearables platform. The video, which was posted by 9to5Google’s Dom Esposito, shows off the Watch Urbane LTE’s main interface that lets you cycle through apps by making a circular motion around the device’s perimeter. What I particularly like about this is that, unlike Android Wear, the webOS-based platform LG is using was designed for circular watches, thus eliminating some of the issues we’ve seen crop up on round Android Wear-based watches such as the Moto 360.