LG’s second Watch Urbane axed after less than a week on sale

News that Korean electronics giant cancelled their much anticipated smartwatch, the LG Watch Urbane 2nd Edition LTE, after just six days on the market shocked everyone. To make matters worse, LG had only offered a vague explanation as to why the device was taken off the shelves late last week.

This week, LG have finally decided to open up a little more and reveals that the device was pulled because of an issue with its display.

When LG initially axed the Watch Urbane 2nd Edition LTE, the company told Android Police that there was a problem with the smartwatch’s hardware and it affected “day-to-day functionality of the device”. Because of the “complicated nature of the issue” LG told Android Police that they would be cancelling the rollout of the device indefinitely. They added that future device availability would be decided at a later time as their top priority was quality assurance.

Now, an LG representative told English daily The Telegraph that there was an issue with “a new advanced component” that had “never been used in an LG wearable device before”.

Not wanting to point fingers or burn bridges with suppliers, LG simply said that after hours of stress testing, the “advanced component” failed to meet their quality standards and would have affected the smartwatch’s image quality.

With that out in the open, critics can safely guess that the “advanced component” is the watch’s P-OLED display. The device was the first smartwatch to achieve a 480×480 pixel resolution, rating the device’s 1.3” screen at a stunning 490 ppi. For more information on the device, head on over here.

OLED displays, though widely shipped in smartphones, is notorious for the amount of problems they come with such as image burn in and rotting pixels, something manufacturers have to work to mitigate.

Since LG stated that the problem would only occur over the life of the device, Ars Technica suspects that it is due to significant image burn in or subpixel death. When pixels rot and die, the blue pixels are usually the first to go, resulting in a loss of brightness and inacurate colours, something we doubt any Watch Urbane 2 users would want.

Besides its hyped screen, the LG’s follow up to the Watch Urbane was also set to be the first Android Wear device to have a built-in LTE modem. Being forced to drop such a high profile device after only six days due to an oversight in quality assurance must be incredibly painful for the electronics giant, something we doubt they will ever want to repeat.

Large manufacturers often have large departments whose primary task is to ensure that their products meet the company’s quality standards, so it does seem a little odd that such a fundamental error was made by LG. What do you think?

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