Most smartwatch companies are almost certainly trying to produce the slimmest, best looking watch possible. After all, we’re expected to wear them all day every day, something that’s not going to happen if it looks like a great, big wart on your wrist. But what if design comes so low on the to-do list, it was only discussed just as everyone was going to lunch? The answer is, you end up with the Neptune Pine.
The Neptune Pine started life as a Kickstarter project at the tail end of last year, and after being successfully funded, the team brought it to CES 2014, where we got a hands-on demonstration. The Pine was hard to miss as we wandered into the, “Wrist Revolution,” section, as it was the biggest product there by miles. If we were Neptune, we’d have employed some pro-wrestlers to demo the Pine, as it’s surely only their wrists which will have a hope of making it look vaguely sensible. Instead, the sweetest, but smallest person available showed the watch off.
It. Is. Gigantic. Ever seen those images comparing the planet Neptune to Earth? That’s how the Pine looks when put next to something like the Pebble. It’s hard to get an idea of just how big it is from the pictures, but balance a pack of 20 cigarettes on your wrist, and you won’t be far off. You’ll also get fewer weird looks if you go out in public like that. Looking at it positively it’s not heavy, but it makes up for that in ungainliness.
The selling point of the Pine, and undoubtedly what drove it to Kickstarter success, is that it’s an actual phone. It runs full Android, takes a SIM card, runs Google Play, has up to 32GB of memory, and a 5-megapixel camera. The Pine’s party trick is the removable face. The entire 2.4-inch screen section unclips from the strap, and you then use it like a tiny smartphone, right down to a miniature QWERTY keyboard. Provided you go slowly, it works shockingly well, and overall the interface is really snappy; but we’d be too self-conscious to use it.
So, the Neptune Pine is either a ridiculously large watch, or a stupidly small smartphone. We can’t think of a situation where we’d want either one.
Image: Neptune Pine