Wear OS LTE smartwatches

An important smartwatch usability factor is whether the smartwatch has LTE. In early 2019, only one currently manufactured Wear OS watch had multi-carrier LTE in North America–the LG W280 Watch Sport. Watches that are locked to Verizon Wireless LTE bands are less interesting to many users because they may want to use a different prepaid LTE provider, and/or use the watch internationally.

Google Fi and Ting work with Wear OS smartwatches having LTE via the T-Mobile 2G / 3G / 4G cellular network. AT&T also works with Wear OS LTE smartwatches. The overlapping T-Mobile / AT&T LTE bands with Wear OS include bands 2, 4 and 5 depending on your watch.

Wear OS LTE smartwatch comparison

Model	CPU	LTE Bands	Google Fi/Ting
LG Urbane 2nd Ed. LTE LG-W200A	SD 400	2, 5	Yes
LG Urbane 2nd Ed. LTE LG-W200V	SD 400	13	No (wrong bands)
LG Watch Sport LG-W280A	SD 2100 MSM8909W	2,4,5,13	Yes
Verizon Wear24	SD 2100	13	No (wrong bands)
Huawei Watch 2	SD 2100	1,3,7,8,39,41	No (wrong bands)

Why are LTE bands important for smartwatches?

The LTE bands are important for knowing if the watch would work on a particular carrier. Sometimes a watch has LTE bands the carrier doesn’t and vice versa. As long as one or more LTE bands overlap, your watch might work–always double check before making a purchase! Carriers don’t use all their authorized LTE bands throughout their entire network. Some LTE bands are used only in urban areas.