LG 3G Touch wristwatch video phone on sale this year

The wristwatch video phone we’ve been waiting for nearly half a century thanks to the broadly syndicated Dick Tracy cartoon strips, is finally about to arrive. LG Electronicshas unveiled the world’s first Touch Watch Phone and it appears to be the hamburger with the lot – camera, Flash Interface, MP3 player, Voice Calling, Text messaging, 3.63cm (1.43-inch) touchscreen, voice recognition, text-to-speech, a 3G Video Telephony (VT) service and GSM Quadband Network capabilities. Shown in prototype form at last year’s CES, the phone (designated LG-GD910) will be available in Europe this year.

LG has used materials and stylistic elements found in watches from top manufacturers in the new phone to ensure that people will be comfortable wearing it for any occasion. The Watch Phone has a curved tempered glass face, high quality metal casing and is a mere 13.9mm thick. It has 7.2 Mbps 3G HSDPA compatibility, enabling high-speed data transmission and video phone calls using the built-in camera.

The mixture of technologies being used in the phone make it one we’ll be attempting to get our hands on as it’s clearly designed to be used in ways we’re not currently using.

The voice recognition can be used with or without a Bluetooth headset and the Text to Speech (TTS) function reads text messages aloud.