Neptune Duo is an autonomous smartwatch with a twist. Rocks Lollipop, looks very interesting

Now, Samsung and the less famous Neptune tried another angle by releasing their own smartphone-smartwatch mixes – respectively, the Gear S and the Pine. These are wearables that rock a smartphone-oriented operating system (in Samsung's case – Tizen, whereas Neptune used Android 4.1), larger screens, and are loaded with hardware, which would be likened to “entry-level” class, if it were on a handset. Said smartwatches can take a SIM card, connect to the Internet autonomously, make calls, and the Pine even rocks a front-facing and a “rear” camera!
These two devices, however, were met with another set of user-repelling features – to house a 2” display on the Gear S and a 2.4” one on the Pine, the wearables needed to be encased in rather large bodies, meaning they end up looking much bigger than we're used to seeing, plus – they still had rather small batteries – 300 mAh on the Samsung and 810 mAh on the Pine.
Well, here comes Neptune again, with a set of devices to remedy these ills, and possibly point to a new direction for wearables. The Neptune Duo is a smartwatch / remote combo kit, which turns things around – the watch is an autonomous unit – like the Gear S and the Pine – and, in this case, it's the “smart” one of the two. The remote is just a “dumb” screen, which needs to be connected to the wearable to function – it offers easier navigation through the interface, handset functionality, and cameras.
The watch is called the Neptune Hub, and has a 2.4” display. This time around, it's shaped more like a band, which helps with the device not looking too bulky (but still appears fairly large). It is powered by a quad-core CPU, supports LTE, Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth, and NFC, and comes with Android 5 Lollipop, which has been customized for the needs of the HUB's small screen, and will seemingly offer some interesting features – on the promotional video, we can see that the watch will support handwriting over the display, in order to be able to type messages.
The handset, called Pocket screen, sports a 5" 720p display, 8 MP LED flash-equipped rear- and 2 MP front-facing camera, and is equipped with all the speakers, vibrators, and microphones you'd expect from a phone – it's just that it's not a phone per se, rather – an extension for the Hub. It also has a 2,800 mAh juice box, and, if you are wondering why a companion handset would need such a large battery, here's the answer – you can use it as a portable battery for the Hub. Neptune boasts that, with the two devices' batteries combined, the user gets a total of 3,800 mAh capacity, which would, according to the company, last "a few days of normal usage on a single charge".
The Duo is scheduled to ship some time in late 2015, but Neptune is offering users to reserve a set right now. The retail price will be $798, but pledging a certain amount of money now will grant early birds a discount. Here are the reserve / pledge tiers:
- Reserve for $0 – cost at shipment $798; no savings
- Pledge $49 – cost at shipment $649; $100 savings
- Pledge $199 – cost at shipment $399; $200 savings
- Pledge $498 – cost at shipment $0; $300 savings
Have you been holding back on purchasing a wearable, waiting for an autonomous smartwatch to grab your attention? What do you think of this one?
source: Neptune
Things that are NOT allowed:
To help keep our community safe and free from spam, we apply temporary limits to newly created accounts: