When Neptune announced the Neptune Duo smartwatch recently, it introduced the concept of it being a central hub, which would control a secondary slave smartphone, rather than the opposite way around. It turns out this was only the beginning of Neptune’s plans for the Duo. Now, it has introduced the Neptune Suite, which puts the watch at the center of your mobile universe — controlling a phone-sized screen, a tablet-sized screen with a keyboard option, plus a Chromecast-style dongle for your TV, and a pair of headphones.
The whole package is being sold through Indiegogo, where the Duo’s original campaign has been upgraded to include all the new hardware. The watch is called the Hub, and it’s at the heart of the Neptune Suite. The Pocket Screen is a slave smartphone with a 5-inch 720p screen, and a pair of cameras, while the Tab Screen is the same thing, but with a much larger 1080p, 10-inch screen.
Clip the Tab Screen to the Neptune Keys wireless keyboard and you’ve got a small laptop, which Neptune says can provide “a full laptop experience.” The Neptune Dongle does something similar, but plugs into a monitor or TV’s HDMI port. Again, it displays whatever’s happening on the Hub watch on a larger screen, just like the phone and tablet sections.
Finally, there’s the Neptune Headset, a pair of wireless headphones for listening to music, that also double as a charging cable, so you can charge two additional Suite devices at the same time. Finally, the dumb Tab Screen and Pocket Screen accessories can lend their battery power to the Hub watch, as if they were dual-purpose battery packs.
The whole Suite range is connected together with WiGig wireless technology, which streams the Hub’s Android OS and everything else to the different screens and hardware, with almost no latency. WiGig was developed by Intel, has been around for a while, and was recently introduced on HP’s Elite x2 tablet.
It all sounds very futuristic, and it is. Neptune isn’t expecting to ship the Neptune Suite out to backers until February 2016, so anyone dreaming of a wire-free, multi-device mobile existence has another year to wait before it becomes reality. There are three payment options for the Neptune Suite. If you’re quick, the whole thing can be picked up for $600, but if you miss out, then you’ll pay $650. Alternatively, there’s the option to pay $200 now, then $550 when it’s all ready for shipping next year. Neptune says the final retail price will be $900.
