Neptune is calling its new project the Neptune Suite. At its most basic, it’s six different pieces of hardware that Neptune promises will work seamlessly with one another. Yet where every major company with a smartwatch (short of Samsung), has put the heavy lifting on people’s smartphones for things like network connectivity and apps, Neptune wants to put it on your wrist.
hubIn the middle of it all is a wrap-around, water-resistant smartwatch called “the hub,” which has a 2.4-inch capacitive touchscreen, a 3G/LTE modem that works with nano-SIM cards, and runs Android 5.0 Lollipop. Joining it are a “pocket screen” and “tab screen,” which expand the screen on the hub using super-fast, short-range wireless standard 802.11ad WiGig. Adding to that are three accessories: a keyboard that can turn the tablet into a notebook of sorts; a dongle with HDMI that will let you push what’s on your hub to other screens (like Google’s Chromecast); and last but not least, a set of wireless headphones.
A very interesting idea, but in my view, a misguided one. This idea would work a lot better if the central device wasn’t an unwieldy, huge bracelet, but the smartphone. I long for the day my smartphone can replace my PC, connecting to displays and peripherals without ever taking it out of my pocket.
Makes sense: you may always carry watch, so making watch the central element makes sense. Also, 2 inch screen will likely leave more battery capacity for data exchange, allowing to use tablet-sized client whenever appropriate and falling back to phone-sized client. IMO it makes much more sense then those smartwatch that are thrown into the market lately.
I don’t agree. It would make more sense in an ideal world, but I really doubt it’s going to have a terribly good battery-life, and did you see how thick that thing is? It would totally bother the fuck out of me when my arms are lying against the table and I’m trying to type anything on the keyboard. And how useful would it really be without carrying either the tablet or phone – sized device with you, too? The display is way too small to actually type anything on or read anything more than a single Tweet, and would you really want to use dictation to spell out private messages in environments where people can overhear you? Basically, you’d still have to carry multiple devices with you.
I just don’t see this working out in real life, it’s going to be an annoyance in practice.
It all comes down to their display. I have some experience with wrist phone, and it didn’t suck that badly. Its battery life was acceptable. It didn’t run Android though. Indeed, if this phone discharges quickly, it sucks. But it doesn’t necessarily do so, and the fact that it has a 2-inch display suggests it may actually have decent power performance.
That said, I’d really prefer something like a dumbphone with power-efficient BT/WiFi. Android on a wrist doesn’t make much sense to me.
I love this idea – except I don’t want the watch to be a modem – I want it to be capable of pairing with my Bluetooth headset so I can use it for calls. Or use it as a speakerphone.
I love the idea of being able to leave the house with JUST my watch. And then depending on my mood, I might take my phablet-sized or tablet-sized device.
The obvious catch with this kind of thing is the battery life, but I’m already at the point where I charge my phone almost constantly when I’m at work, so this probably wouldn’t be much different.
https://www.reddit.com/r/shittykickstarters/comments/2zghty/neptune_…
I posted without reading the linked article – it looks like this might be exactly what I want… Sounds very promising…
Their previous KS was rather meh, the reviews tell: http://www.amazon.com/NEPTUNE-Pine-16GB-Smartwatch-Packaging/dp/B00…
about this is the presentation. The video and renders look awesome and I love the idea of the headset doubling as a charging cable.
As an idea I like it as well, although I don’t see any reason for the band instead of a smartphone other than “band is better for sensors”
I cannot imagine that they can put enough power and battery life in the band to pull this of. Streaming a 1080p movie wireless to another device is going to drain a whole lot of power. And playing a game is going to drain it even more. And for that a lot of features (gyro) has to be put into all screens anyway
Also, that keyboard looks completely useless with that size.
It seems like they have great ideas but are way too ambitious in going to make this happen within the next 9 months