LG Life Band Touch: The Smart Wristband With Sound Controls [CES 2014]

By Eliot Van Buskirk of Evolver.fm.

Smartphones are great, because they freed apps from computers. They are lame because they then imprisoned them on the smartphone, so you sometimes have to dig around in your pocket, unlock the phone, and navigate to the app before you can control it. (Yes, you can control music from the lock screen to an extent, which is better, but it doesn’t solve the problem completely.)

At CES on Monday, LG unveiled a new smart wristband, the Life Band Touch (no price or release date), featuring a small, bright OLED touch display, which is flattened a bit, making it look more like a wrist band than a traditional watch, although it functions as one of those too.

Like other smart watches, the LG Life Band Touch connects to iOS and Android via Bluetooth 4.0, and it features music controls, among other things, so you can skip tracks without rummaging for your phone.

In combination with the Life Band Touch, LG will also offer special headphones than can monitor your heartbeat from within your ear, leading to extensive possibilities for exercise music apps (which could, say, play faster and more energetic music until the target heart rate is attained).

The watch can also track your steps with its motion detector and tell you how many calories you’ve burned, and issues notifications from your apps, which could be neat in a music context too — for instance, it would be nice to get a wrist alert if your favorite band suddenly announces a tour that’s likely to sell out quickly.

That’s about all people know about the LG Life Band Touch at this point, and it’s all based on a Korean-language press release, but more details should emerge soon. According to The Verge, LG plans to announce Life Band Touch more formally this week at CES, so reporters should be able to get their hands on them soon.

(Image courtesy of LG)