The first two Android Wear watches have been taken apart

Jul 1, 2014 13:12 GMT  ·  By

The first batch of Android Wear smartwatches are already among us, in the form of the LG G Watch and Samsung Gear Live.

For the time being, there’s not much setting the LG and Samsung smartwatches apart in terms of software, because Google has forbidden tech partners to apply any customization to the Android Wear UI. But in terms of looks and hardware, there are some differences here and there.

For starters, the LG G Watch is a tad larger, coming with a 1.65-inch LCD screen, while the Gear Live has a 1.63-inch one of the AMOLED variety. But what lies under the hood?

Your curiosity will be answered by the guys over at AnandTech who have performed the first teardown expedition into the insides of the two smartwatches. What did they find?

Before we tell you that, we should mention that, for a lot of people, the news of the two mini wrist bound wearables coming equipped with a quad-core Snapdragon 400 processor was quite shocking. That’s because the processor was deemed to be way powerful for a smartwatch.

After all, the Snapdragon 400 platform is at the center of a few mid-range phones that have much more demanding tasks to deal with.

But now that the smartwatch teardowns are here, we get the confirmation that a Qualcomm APQ8025 System-on-chip, with 4 Cortex A7 based CPUs cores and Adreno 305 GPU, actually lives under the hood.

Anyway, it appears that the "powerful” chip is in fact downclocked and limited to running on only one core. This theory appears to have been confirmed by a command shell run on AnTuTu which delivered identical results for single- and multi-core performance.

Apart from that, the LG G Watch is quite basic and the layout of the internal components doesn't bring any surprises to the table.

On the other hand, Samsung’s smartwatch is a little more neat and complex. Since this is the company’s fourth smartwatch, we can see why. The Gear Live has two layers to it and a separate compartment houses the heart-rate monitor.

The watch can be taken apart using simple screws, but the procedure required a little more effort than with the LG G Watch.

It will be pretty interesting to track the manner in which the structure of the Android Wear smartwatch evolves over time, as more and more products from the category make it on the market.

For those of you who are interested in purchasing one of these little gizmos, both watches have been made available for sale, with the LG G Watch taking you back with $229 / €167 while the Samsung Gear Live is a little bit more affordable, sitting at $199 / €145.

Android Wear Teardown (9 Images)

LG G Watch and Samsung Gear Live teardown
Samsung Gear Live teardownLG G Watch teardown
+6more