Martian mVip Kindred Analog Smartwatch with VIP Notifications and Fitness for iOS and Android (MPS01CL025)

***UPDATE***The step counter still doesn't work. It did once but I had walked more steps at 8am than at 10am :/ - never worked after that one day.The phone leash works perfectly. I have the tendency to leave my phone everywhere so that works for me. Any alarm I set also work with a gentle vibration on my wrist.I have 2 iPhone - one iPhone 5 work phone and one iPhone 6 personal. I paired the watch to both phones and no notifications come through with my iPhone 6 but calls notifications (not text or email) come when paired with my iPhone 5. I gave my boss a VIP color and.. VICTORY! Whenever she calls the pink LED comes on :)I'm still disappointed that most of the smart functions of the watch don't work but it's a beauty on my wrist so I'm keeping it to add to my watch collections. However, I still need an elegant yet effective hybrid smart watch. This is not it.***ORIGINAL REVIEW***The watch looks beautiful. It tells time accurately but does nothing else.I am utterly disappointed - steps counter doesn't work, sleep is not accurate, absolutely no phone notifications have worked so far (they work in settings as a demo but not as I get text or calls).It looks beautiful on my wrist and I may keep it as a regular watch (so disappointed though that I may still return it) but the hunt for the right hybrid smart watch continues...

I'm satisfied with my purchase, love the look of it and the built, and the battery last me TWO WEEKS on one charge!I saw some of other reviews about connectivity and not being able to receive Vip notifications, I actually had the same experience at first but not after I got the latest mVip Alerts App and the latest watch firmware (with Martian support's help I found it's actually really easy to do!).So first off, make sure you guys get the latest firmware, it fixes these issues.Secondly, it's a VIP watch so if you don't set up any VIP contacts, you won't get the notifications onto your watch because it's filtering out everything unless you set up some VIP contacts to allow them to get to you (your watch).Last, I also found out that with other BT devices paired to my phone, sometimes they will "fight" for the connections. So I had my house BT speaker paired to my phones prior to pairing my Martian mVip, whenever I get home, the BT speaker will try to connect which makes my mVip disconnects. After I un-pair my BT speaker, this never happens again.

So sad to have to return this watch because it's so adorable, but it did not work for me at all. I read other reviews prior to purchasing, but was hoping my sitaution would be different. Unfortunately, other reviewers ended up being pretty spot on. The watch wouldn't stay connected to my phone so it would randomly vibrate (I'm assuming to let me know it wasn't paired?) but who really knows. It only notified me when one of my "VIP" contacts texted/called me about half the time. In terms of the step counting feature, it started out not counting my steps at all, but then transitioned to randomly erasing my step count entirely. Bummed that it has to go back, but I can't justify keeping a watch that won't function as promised.

I purchased this watch for my 70 year old mother. She can never seem to hear her cell phone ringing so I thought this would be helpful. I decided to open it and charge it prior to giving it to her on Christmas.When I examined the box the sticky circle on one side holding the box closed looked used. If you look in the picture you can even see there's a piece of dirt on the underside. I opened the box and I immediately noticed the inside cardboard was crumpled and the watch was sitting off center. The outside shell of this box is hard so I'm not sure how the inside cardboard was crumbled.I can only hope this is not a used watch that was returned and then sent to me. I will update my review once my mother opens the watch on Christmas and I can set it up for her.

This watch never receives notifications. More precisely, the iPhone app doesn't notice notifications so it never forwards them to the watch.I am testing this watch with an iPhone SE running iOS 10.3.1. I have upgraded the watch firmware to 1.5.7 and mVIP Alert app to 2.0.2 (17.0124.1). I have reset the app and watch and selected "forget device" in bluetooth. Each time I am able to successfully pair the phone and watch. Invoking the "find my watch" and "Demo sample notifications" functions cause the watch to vibrate and LED to flash. The watch and phone are clearly communicating.The problem seems to lie with the iPhone app. The app never seems to notice any notification of any kind. The app purports to know about "top rated" notifications from apps like "calendar" and "email" out of the box, however, the app never forwards those notifications to the watch. According to the manual "iPhone users see the same top rated applications, however, you might not see the other apps on your phone until you receive an initial notification from them." Based on this, I'd expect that the mVIP Alert app would list the GMail app in its list of notifications when the first GMail alert is received after installing the mVIP app. That is how the app for the Martian Notifier works. The mVip Alert app on the other hand (i.e. the app for use with this watch) never notices any notifications from any app.I already own and use a  Martian Watches Notifier Smartwatch - Black  every day. That watch was designed several years ago. All I expect any of these Martian watches to do is vibrate when I get a notification on my phone. The Martian Notifier does that reliably. The Martian mVip Kindred on the other hand does not.I don't get it, Martian. The mVip Kindred does nothing substantially different from the Martian Notifier. The Martian Notifier has been working fine for literally years. WTF? Why would you release a product with the same features as your other years-old products but that plain-old doesn't work.-------------Update:By invoking "Demo sample notifications" from the app I was able to test how notifications would feel. The vibrations are way too soft and are barely noticeable if I'm sitting still. The vibrations are impossible to detect when walking or driving. Even if Martian fix their broken iOS app, this watch will still be useless for receiving notifications. I am returning this watch.