Martian Passport Watch brings retro-cool future to your wrist
Smartwatches
-I'm Scott Stein.
Maybe you'd like the idea of tech being invisible, nothing here or looking like something out of a Dick Tracy movie.
If so, what's my wrist might interest you.
It's the Martian passport watch and it's a smart watch.
It's doesn't require any other gadget except for the phone that's on your pocket the whole time communicating with it via Bluetooth.
Now, did you ever think about communicating with your watch?
Call my wife.
It's all about style and it's all about a type of tech fed association that's specific to that Dick Tracy aesthetic.
You're not gonna find any health monitoring on here.
You're not gonna find any music playback.
That's not that type of smart watch.
There's no touchscreen on this watch.
In fact, there's only tiny LED screen at the bottom.
It's really an old fashion analog watch with style that's 1960s type of throw back.
Martian makes 3 different type watches in line, passport.
There's also a round one called the Victory,
and a candy colored version of this watch with wristbands ranging from black silicon here to leather and the feel of it, stainless steel case, the crystal cover, the analog construction here feels like a throwback watch and one that might not feel uncomfortable at all wearing out.
It's pretty stylish in fossil type of way, but be because this thing is 299.
That's pretty expensive compared to other smart watches in this territory and what it has really is a
suite of Bluetooth connecting apps and services.
You really gonna be banking the most on using this for it's speaker phone capabilities.
There is a microphone that is noise cancelling, and there's also a speaker built in to the base of this watch and with Bluetooth 4.0, it connects with iOS or Android to make phone calls, to answer phone calls.
-Hello.
-Hello, how are you?
-Oh, good, how are you?
-Also via small OLED read at the bottom.
It will tell you who's calling, communicate text messages, notifications, and allow you to change settings.
Martian watches work with an app that is available now Android and is forthcoming on iOS and it allows you to kick wizard of notification you're going to receive via social networking, e-mail, or other.
Now, iOS, you can still do a lot of functions right now, including placing calls, using Siri the way you move with any other Bluetooth device,
and also to receive text messages via that little OLED screen or find out who's calling if you wanna do some call screening.
There's a vibrating buzzer on here that's very loud and let's you know when the call is coming.
Now, you can also feel what's going on in your pocket if you've got a phone and some pretty good nerves in your thigh, but if you wan to sit in your living for instance and your phone is out of reach, there maybe you don't have your phone, you left your ringer off and that kind of pretty useful in that regard.
What else you're gonna use this thing for?
Well, unfortunately, this is not port over to a Bluetooth headset and it does have any headphone jack.
So, any communication, you're doing with the Martian passport watch is going to be like Dick Tracy speaking directly into it, but it's going to have real impact when you have conversations.
In face, when I spoke with my wife on it she often told me to switch back over to the phone as soon as possible.
-Hey, how are you doing?
I'm calling for the test video.
Can you hear me?
-What?
-Can you hear me at all?
-Not very well.
-Okay.
-And it charges via micro USB, via little door on the side
and it comes with it's own Micro USB charge cable and even a little AC adaptor.
The Martian watch will last for up 7 days of standby, 2 plus hours of talk time, and 30 days of use for the analog watch.
Now, so far, over the course of the week, that's held up, and a week is pretty good between charges for all of your basic functions and 2 hours of talk time may sound like not that much, but trust, me, you're not gonna wanna talk for more than 25 minutes on this, maybe not even 5.
-I love you, my arm is getting tired.
-[unk] keep going.
-There are a couple of other neat, funky little futures on the Martian watch including a camera mode that allows you to Bluetooth connect to your camera app and you control the shutter for the button.
There is a fine phone mode, but only works via the Martian and plays music.
Instead, you can also try using leash mode, which lets you know when the phone and the watch have gone out of range and gives you a little buzz reminder mostly you've left your phone in your apartment.
So, that's the Martian passport watch in a nutshell, cool design, not really that useful set of features.
Watch finishes, take note.
I'm Scott Stein for CNET.
