News & Reviews:   Neptune Pine

For the most part, smartwatches and smartbands today are just companion Bluetooth remote control devices you wear on your wrist. You actually need your smartphone around for the smartwatch to work. However, there are some smartwatches that let you do away with the smartphone like the Neptune Pine and Goophone smartwatch, but the latest one is the Exetech XS-3. Following the slab of touchscreen school of design, the Exetech XS-3 is a fairly thick smartwatch that has no back cover for the battery underneath it. This battery comes in direct contact with your skin (and sweat) so we're a bit wary that you might short the smartwatch out (and yourself).

There have been quite a few smartwatch announcements recently and one of the latest is the Neptune Pine smartwatch. Originally a Kickstarter crowd-funding project (which is still running and has already met it's $100000 goal), the Pine smartwatch is a standalone device that packs in the tech specs and hardware of an entry-level smartphone into a rather chunky smartwatch that you can remove from the dock like strap to take pictures. This is because the Pine has a 5MP rear camera to go with a VGA front camera as well, both complete with LED flash. Other tech specs include a 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 512MB of RAM, 16GB / 32GB of storage and a 2.4-inch screen with 320 x 240 pixel resolution. The Pine supports Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS and even 3G along with voice calls and SMS. While it runs on Android 4.1, Neptune devs are currently working on an Android 4.4 update. Check out the videos, images and links in this article.