LG and Samsung sneak out new smart watches before Moto and Apple events

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

Just months after officially introducing their Android Wear smart watches, both Samsung and LG have teased new wearables in anticipation of Motorola's Moto 360 and Apple's anticipated 'wrist wearable thing,' which are expected to be announced days from each other in early September.

LG's second smart watch is a departure from its plain and bland first try, the LG G watch Round looks more sophisticated and attractive than the previous version. So, if you waited and you really wanted a round smart watch, you now have a choice. But is it a good time to choose?

The LG G watch R (for round) features a 1.3" fully circular Plastic OLED display with a resolution of 320 x 320 pixels, it uses the whole cirrcumference of the screen to display information, which is interesting since Motorola's Moto 360 supposedly doesn't. LG is planning to roll out this watch in Q4' so it's a few months away from the market.

Samsung has been pushing out 'smart' watches longer than anyone except for Sony and it now has a new Samsung Gear S which is a curved smart watch and one with 3D features. The Gear S runs Samsung's own Tizen OS and not Google's but the biggest surprise is that it is has its own SIM card and can work independently from your smartphone (if you should so desire).

What's the take away from all these releases? We should all wait a few weeks to see what the smart watch landscape really looks like and what other manufacturers have in store. It's fun to see this space heating up so fast and so quick but just like when there was a deluge of first generation tablets, but they were expensive and really not very good.  We'll keep tracking these watches and see how this plays out in the next couple of weeks.