I love how often technology completely takes me by surprise.
The Neptune Pine is a great example. I’m going to tell you all about it in a minute here, but I’ll start by saying that I was expecting a straight jump from hand held mobile devices to head worn devices, with absolutely nothing in between. It seems I was completely wrong, and after watching this promotional video for the Neptune Pine, I have a feeling we’re about to see the “successor” to the mobile phone.
Let’s start off with what it does, and then we can talk about why I believe that “smart watches” are going to be the next killer gadget.
The Smartphone you Wear on Your Wrist
The Neptune Pine, designed right here in Montreal, Canada, is a smartphone that you wear on your wrist. They’re marketing it as a smartwatch, but it’s so much more than that. It’s a full powered smartphone that you wear on your wrist.
If you’ve seen any of the current offerings, like say, the Pebble watch that also ran on Kickstarter, you may remember that they basically act as a second display for your phone. If someone calls you, it displays that information on your watch. If you want to send a text message, you can type it on your wrist and it will send through your phone via Bluetooth. That’s kind of neat, but if you ask me, they just didn’t go far enough. Why not make the watch a full powered smartphone? That’s where Neptune comes in.
The Pine has a shit-ton of features, so instead of prattling them off one by one, I’m going to let Simon Tinn, the CEO of Neptune, do the talking.
Pretty neat eh?
Why Should we Spend $300+ on This?
Normally I would dismiss this as a useless techno-bauble just like all the other smartwatches on the market. They just don’t offer anything particularly useful that I can’t already do with my phone. The Pine, however, seems to be going in a direction that I believe will actually get some traction.
Here’s why I like it, and why I think the Pine is going to kick off a mobile evolution:
- It’s a stand alone, fully functional cell phone. You can actually make calls directly from your wrist using most GSM and CDMA based networks.
- I don’t have to keep it in a pocket. I think glancing at a “watch” is a lot more natural than rummaging around my pockets for my phone, or leaving my phone sitting on the table while I have dinner with friends.
- Because it’s simply running Android, most existing apps will work right out of the gate. App creators won’t have to do much in the way of porting, which means a strong ecosystem straight out of the gate.
Now, with that, I do have a concern: battery life.
Yes, they’ve posted the numbers (and they look half decent), but they’re also based on a 2G network/Wi-Fi, and using a brand new battery. Given the compact size, I’ll be interested to see how they hold up as the battery wears.
That’s it. Aside from that, I’m pretty excited. The only other thing I would suggest is that they add a second small processor to handle displaying the clock at all times because, well… if it looks like a watch, it should probably act a bit like a watch too.
Header on over to Kickstarter to help fund the campaign.
