Martian Watches was a brand of

smart watch A smartwatch is a wearable computer in the form of a watch; modern smartwatches provide a local touchscreen interface for daily use, while an associated smartphone app provides management and telemetry, such as long-term biomonitoring. While ea ...

founded in 2007 in the United States by SilverPlus, Inc., an American company headquartered in

Irvine, California Irvine () is a Planned community, master-planned city in South Orange County, California, United States, in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Irvine Company started developing the area in the 1960s and the city was formally incorporated on ...

. Martian Watches allow for

hands-free Handsfree is an adjective describing equipment that can be used without the use of hands (for example via voice commands) or, in a wider sense, equipment which needs only limited use of hands, or for which the controls are positioned so that the ...

use of

mobile phone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whil ...

s via short distance wireless communication. Using

Bluetooth Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is limi ...

and voice recognition technology, users can take calls, listen to or send text messages, see caller ID information, and send text using speech synthesis. The Martian watch is reportedly the first watch to utilize voice commands.

Features

Martian Watches were produced in several styles, each with an analog time display, a small

OLED An organic light-emitting diode (OLED or organic LED), also known as organic electroluminescent (organic EL) diode, is a light-emitting diode (LED) in which the emissive electroluminescent layer is a film of organic compound that emits light i ...

display screen, a speaker, and a noise-cancelling microphone. The small OLED displays scrolling text which can show

caller ID Caller identification (Caller ID) is a telephone service, available in analog and digital telephone systems, including voice over IP (VoIP), that transmits a caller's telephone number to the called party's telephone equipment when the call is ...

information, text messages, and other information such as social media notifications. In addition, the watch can be used to trigger the shutter of the mobile phone's camera. The watches utilize

Bluetooth 4.0 Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is limit ...

, which supports regular Bluetooth, as well as

Bluetooth low energy Bluetooth Low Energy (Bluetooth LE, colloquially BLE, formerly marketed as Bluetooth Smart) is a wireless personal area network technology designed and marketed by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (Bluetooth SIG) aimed at novel applications in ...

. The analog watch portion of Martian Watches is powered by a

watch battery A button cell, watch battery, or coin battery is a small single-cell battery shaped as a squat cylinder typically in diameter and high — resembling a button. Stainless steel usually forms the bottom body and positive terminal of the cell; insu ...

, and there is a side-mounted

micro USB The initial versions of the USB standard specified connectors that were easy to use and that would have acceptable life spans; revisions of the standard added smaller connectors useful for compact portable devices. Higher-speed development of t ...

port for the rechargeable battery that handles the phone functions, in addition to an

accelerometer An accelerometer is a tool that measures proper acceleration. Proper acceleration is the acceleration (the rate of change of velocity) of a body in its own instantaneous rest frame; this is different from coordinate acceleration, which is accele ...

Awards

Martian Watches was named a CNET "Best of CES Finalist" at CES 2013, and was selected for a Popular Mechanics CES 2013 Editor's Choice Award. In addition, the Edison Award for Productivity Tools was awarded to Martian Watches in April 2013.

Kickstarter campaign

Martian successfully launched their wireless smartphone-connected watches via the

Kickstarter Kickstarter is an American public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". As of July 2021, ...

crowd funding Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and alternative finance. In 2015, over was raised worldwide by cro ...

platform on August 16, 2012, and the first watches were delivered to customers in early February 2013. A new Kickstarter campaign in 2018 has resulted in significan
customer complaints
with users either not receiving their goods or receiving watches which do not work as advertised. The company has so far not responded to customer criticism and it seems that the Martian office phones are cut off, with support tickets also going unanswered. Update (May 23, 2018): Martian issued a statement to Kickstarter backers saying that after shipping the first batch of about 480 watches, they lack the funding to continue. They tried to acquire more funding to cover their costs (amounting upwards of $15,000,000) but they were unable to get funding. They are closing the company and liquidating their assets to pay investors. They will be issuing another update to Kickstarter backers in about 30 days, when they decide what they will do to repay their debts and issue refunds to their backers. Many backers are angry at their lack of financial planning as they greatly mislead users by setting a $30,000 goal and raised over ten times this amount, yet they are $15,000,000 short of fulfilling the orders. As this goes against Kickstarter terms of service by not providing a product or a refund, users await their next update in the coming months.

SilverPlus

SilverPlus, Inc., the U.S. distributor of Martian Watches, was established in 2007 by CEO Jeffrey Hsieh and CTO Dennis Kwan. The president of the company is

Stan Kinsey Stan Kinsey is a former Disney executive and co-founder of Iwerks Entertainment, along with Oscar winner and Disney Legend Don Iwerks. Kinsey is best known as a visionary who sought to take The Walt Disney Company in the direction of computer an ...

Other products

In 2011, SilverPlus launched a home communication safety system for seniors called the SilverCare Personal Safety Alert Device that included a two-way voice communication watch/pendant and a base station connected to a home telephone line. The unique digital watch had a microphone and speaker that allowed the wearer, when within 100 feet of its base station, to call for help and speak to

9-1-1 , usually written 911, is an emergency telephone number for the United States, Canada, Mexico, Panama, Palau, Argentina, Philippines, Jordan, as well as the North American Numbering Plan (NANP), one of eight N11 codes. Like other emergency nu ...

, family members, or a caregiver. In August 2014 it was revealed that Martian was teaming up with

Guess A guess (or an act of guessing) is a swift conclusion drawn from data directly at hand, and held as probable or tentative, while the person making the guess (the guesser) admittedly lacks material for a greater degree of certainty. A guess is als ...

to launch a range of branded smartwatches.

Closure

On 24 May, 2018, it was announced that ''Martian Watches'' will cancel the mVoice G2 product and permanently cease operations after 11 years in business due to financial troubles.Martian Watches goes out of business
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External links

Official site

References

{{Smartwatch Watch brands Watch manufacturing companies of the United States Manufacturing companies established in 2007 Manufacturing companies disestablished in 2018 Bluetooth Smartwatches Ubiquitous computing