Aside from the Samsung Galaxy Gear, which needs to be paired with one of Samsung’s high end smartphones, most of the smart watches today are limited in their functionality. Pebble, the most popular smart watch to data, does notifications extremely well and has a spattering of games and other apps. Most of the other smart watches available today don’t do much more than that.
When people hear the words “smart watch” they’re expecting a smartphone on their wrist. They want a stand alone device that can surf the web, has apps, can make calls, play music and other smartphone functions.
The Neptune Pine, may be that first smart watch that does it all, that people have been waiting for. 19 year old Simon Tian is the brains behind the Pine. Gizmag said that the Neptune Pine watch may be the first smart watch that really gets the ball rolling.
The Pine is the first “independent” smart watch. It’s designed to take a microSD card without requiring the watch to be paired to a smartphone. The Pine will make and take calls, play music and videos, send and receive emails, browse the internet, text and even have GPS. A 5 megapixel camera capable of shooting video and pictures, and a heart monitor will round out the next generation of smart watch.
The device is powered by the full version of Android 4.3, Jelly Bean. That means that The Pine watch will be capable of downloading hundreds of thousands of apps via the Google Play store. The Pine will also support voice commands via Android.
Neptune has finished a prototype of the Neptune Pine and according to the company they will start shipping Kickstarter orders in January. The watch will be available in two configurations, 16gb and 32gb. The 16gb version has an MSRP of $314 while the 32gb version has an MSRP of $370. At the time this article was written there were 12 days left in the Kickstarter campaign which still has the 16gb and 32gb versions available at a discount. You can sign up early and back Neptune here at kickstarter.
Check out the demo video below: