Owners of the LG G Watch reported about a flaw that they had been experiencing with their smartwatch. The complaints accumulated over the past few weeks were about an issue of corrosion build up on the POGO pins that enables charging on the back of the LG G Watch. Aside from that, wearers also noted that they had been experiencing a slight discomfort on their wrist while wearing the smartwatch, thus causing skin irritation and even minor burns.
It turns out that there is a constant current running through two of the metal contacts behind the LG G Watch. When these charging pins gets in contact with the sweat on the skin of the wearer’s wrist, a chemical process called galvanic corrosion takes place and leads to the discomfort that the wearer might experiences. While it may sound serious but wearer’s arm isn’t exactly going to melt off by the chemical reaction and will not affect the charging process of the device.
Fortunately, LG has acknowledged this issue and apologised to all users. The company takes action to address this problem with an over-the-air update to its G Watch. The update allows the current to remain off while user is wearing it, and be activated as users connect it to the charging cradle. This may solve the cause of irritation on your arm entirely, however, the corrosion buildup may still occur as the device charges with residual sweat remain on the pins.
LG sent a representative to announce on the company’s acknowledgement of the problems to Android Police and was further confirm by a Google representative.
“LG TV, Monitors, AV and IT Support
Recently it has come to our attention that a small number of G Watch devices have been reported to have developed discoloration and residue buildup on the terminal pins located on the back. While completely safe and unlikely to affect charging, LG will be rolling out a maintenance release over the next few days that will disable the current when the G Watch is not in the charging dock. The maintenance release will be rolled out automatically over-the-air to all G Watch owners. We thank G Watch users for their patients and apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused.”
The update is now rolling out to all LG G Watch at a steady pace. However, this particular issue is not exactly a big concern for our market at this moment since the smartwatch is yet to arrive in Malaysia.
[Source: Engadget, Android Police]
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