Wear OS LTE smartwatches

An important smartwatch usability factor is whether the smartwatch has LTE. As 2018 concludes, only one current Wear OS watch had LTE in North America–the LG W280 Watch Sport.

Project Fi and Ting work with Wear OS smartwatches having LTE, using the T-Mobile 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.

LTE smartwatch comparison

Model	CPU	LTE Bands	Project 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
LG Watch Sport LG-W280A	SD 2100 MSM8909W	2,4,5,13	Yes
Verizon Wear24	SD 2100	13	No
Huawei Watch 2	SD 2100	1,3,7,8,39,41	No
Apple Watch 3 LTE A1860/A1861		2,4,5,12,13,17,18,19,25,26,41	No (eSIM)

Apple Watch LTE

The Apple Watch is not currently compatible with Project Fi/Ting since it uses an eSIM and Project Fi / Ting currently require a nano-SIM. Ting has the iPhones with eSIM working, but as of this writing didn’t yet announce Apple Watch eSIM support.

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.