Imagine somebody tells you they have an idea for a revolutionary new bicycle. Except it has a gas engine. And headlights. And can be driven at up to 35MPH. You might - mistakenly! - contend that what this person is talking about is in fact a motorcycle, and that it already exists, and why on earth would you invent a motorcycle with skinny bike tires, a tragically low top speed, cantilever brakes, and no sprung suspension (concerns of cost aside)? This, though, ignores the fact that it is in many ways different from a motorcycle, does most of what you need a motorcycle to do, and is categorically worse at every single one of those things. Meet Neptune Duo - a smartwatch that comes with a large, secondary device you put in your pocket to serve as a screen and input assistant. You know, like a smartphone, but way dumber.

So, if you know Neptune, you know they've already made a ridiculous smartwatch, and it's called the Pine. It is an absolute and utter affront to usability, practicality, fashion, and the common sense I hope we as individuals all possess, even if sometimes our gadget-lust gets the best of us and causes us to leave delusional Amazon reviews defending indefensible products.

The Pine is gigantic, desperately ugly, and about as ergonomically appealing as an Eames lounge chair upholstered in live porcupines. The good news is that the Neptune Duo's smartwatch component looks absolutely nothing like the Pine, because seriously how did that actually get funded on Kickstarter. The watch has a quad-core processor, 1000mAh battery, 3G/4G connectivity, Wi-Fi, GPS, and NFC.

Neptune Duo appears to have a curved display, and a much more fashion-friendly, thin-ish slap bracelet design. I personally don't think it looks half bad in these 100% conceptual renders, though beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Like the Pine, it will have a SIM card, and serve as a standalone smartphone replacement instead of a tethered peripheral. Instead, the not-smartphone "Pocket screen" (a 5" touchscreen) serves as the accessory, allowing you to read large amounts of text, input text, take phone calls (without a Bluetooth headset), and do the other stuff that, if you were to do it on a smartwatch that claims to be a complete standalone phone, would be maddeningly difficult and annoying.

So, Neptune has invented a smartphone that can't be used without its attached smartwatch and probably does only a very small number of things that a normal smartphone can do, and a smartwatch that can do a few things more than a normal smartwatch can, but still isn't going to be as good as a smartphone at almost any of them.

[EMBED_YT]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9LyQmADrS4

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I give up.

You can pre-order the Neptune Duo today - it will cost $798 when it maybe goes on sale in late 2015 (with the possibility it will look substantially less cool than it does here), or you can get the promise of one for $500 today - $300 off in exchange for your vote of confidence (or less, if you want a smaller discount).

PRESS RELEASE

Source: Neptune