The Oura Ring is the main challenger to Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy Ring.
This story was updated on February 22nd. Update below.
Samsung has kept quiet on what features will be included in its game changing Galaxy Ring, but a new report has lifted the lid what we can expect to see in the upcoming wearable.
According to Korean publication The Elec, via (Android Authority), the Galaxy Ring is still at prototype stage, but it is entering mass scale production in the “second quarter,” which could be as early as April. The Korean company is planning to release the Ring at its summer Galaxy Unpacked event, which is when we’re also likely to see the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Flip 6 make their first appearances.
An end of July release date for the Ring and new foldable phones is in line with the date of last year’s event, which happened on July 26th. The two Galaxy Unpacked shows before that took place in early August, so there’s a good chance Samsung unveils its new technology between the end of July and start of August.
The Elec’s story claims that the Galaxy Ring will include blood flow measurement for monitoring things like a user’s heart rate. The wearable will also have electrocardiogram “functions” to detect possible heart-related problems, such as an abnormal heart rhythm.
I suspect by “functions” the source speaking with The Elec is suggesting that the Ring will deploy similar photoplethysmography (PPG) sensors that the Oura Ring uses, which the company says is 99.9% reliable when compared to a medical grade ECG.
Where things get interesting is in the additional features that the Galaxy Ring will supposedly come with. According to the story, Samsung’s new wearable will be able to control “other devices” and be used for wireless payments. This is precisely why Samsung wants to the enter the miniature wearable field: it has an inbuilt advantage over rivals because of its existing software infrastructure.
Samsung already has its own mobile payments platform called Samsung Pay. It also has an entire suite of connected devices, alongside its own smart home platform: SmartThings. How exactly owners will be able to use their screen-less Ring to control their TV, for example (maybe a swipe turns the volume down?), will be interesting. But the hard part, building entire backend of technology to support such a feature, already exists.
The big questions are price and how the company’s Galaxy AI will be deployed in the Ring, if at all. Samsung has a penchant for stuffing its devices with too many features and the possibility of remote device control could be an early sign that the Galaxy Ring is headed down the same path. We’ll know more over the coming months as new information about the wearable surfaces.
Update February 22nd: The July launch event for the Galaxy Ring and Z Fold 6 looks like it will be packed with some interesting new innovations and changes. Aside from the new smart ring, Samsung is also planning to widen the Galaxy Fold 6 cover screen, noted tipster Ice Universe claims, as Forbes’ Ewan Spence reports.
This would be a huge improvement on the aspect ratio of the current Galaxy Z Fold 5, which has a narrow cover display and can be awkward to use. Samsung has openly shown how it experiments with Fold designs, even demoing some concept devices to reporters shortly after the Fold 5 launched. This would bring the foldable experience in line with a more traditionally shaped smartphone and might be the small, but necessary, change needed to convince foldable sceptics.
Elsewhere, ETNews is also claiming that Apple will be entering the smart ring arena with its own rival device, describing a potential consumer ready product as “imminent,” (via Google translate) according to an “industry insider”. We will have to see if that is the case in the coming months, but it does seem that smart rings are the wearable tech trend of 2024.
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