Sunday Run Day
In this weekly column, Michael Hicks, editor of Android Central Wearables, talks about the world of wearables, apps and fitness technology related to running and health, in his quest to get faster and fitter.
To move beyond the tech niche and into the mainstream, smart rings may need a “killer app” to stand out and justify their high prices. It is unclear which features they need versus the features added to the pads’ spec sheets or that make them sound futuristic.
Smart rings have exploded in 2024, for better or worse. You can hardly go a week without some new brand launching a clever Kickstarter, with each brand promising more features than the last. Before the Samsung Galaxy Ring arrives, they’re all launching competing products with outlandish promises and (mostly) interchangeable features.
In this oversaturated market, brand recognition gives Samsung and Oura an advantage. But the Oura Ring (Gen 3) has a few missing features, and Galaxy Ring leaks suggest the first-generation device won’t have as many “smarts” as you might think.
After reviewing the Ultrahuman Ring Air and consulting my smart ring-loving colleagues, I have a list of potential smart ring features that haven’t yet been implemented or are rare to find, but will likely make this smart jewelry much more popular. .
Any option “Find my lost ring”.
People lose jewelry all the time, but losing a $10 gold band from Target and a $300+ smart ring doesn’t compare. And at this point, losing a smart ring is virtually irrevocable. Built-in GPS or a speaker can make a ring too bulky, and no smart ring uses a Find My Device network or other method to track it down.
A recent Galaxy Ring leak suggests that Samsung will add a “Lost Mode” feature that activates a flashing LED and disables data sharing if someone else finds it. However, I don’t think this goes far enough, as a light won’t help if the ring falls into a couch cushion or is left somewhere far away.
What you Real The need is for a smart ring to use your phone’s GPS to store its exact location the moment the wear detection catches you taking it off, so you generally know where to look. Once you’re in the immediate area, something like Ultra Wideband (UWB) may be the best option for tracking down a ring that’s hard to find, assuming this doesn’t make the ring too heavy.
Subtle, versatile feel
Many people like smart rings because that’s what they are not such as smartwatches. You receive passive health data without notifications constantly buzzing on your wrist. That said, haptics is a common request we’ve seen on our smart rings forum.
People who sleep with smartwatches say they use their watch’s alarm function to subtly buzz themselves awake. To replace smartwatches for those people, a smart ring needs the same effect. It wouldn’t need one strong engine to work on this format to wake you up too.
Circular is the only ring we know of with a vibration motor. The smart ring uses buzzes not only for alarms, but also for notifications, reminders, and breathing exercise prompts. Not everyone will want their jewelry buzzing at them all day, but haptics make smart rings seem essential for some people.
AFib and other health tricks
Some people prefer to wear smarts-free luxury watches for their style and simplicity; Others, like my parents, just don’t like watches, especially big and complicated ones. But that tech-averse crowd could wear a smart ring if it gave them enough health data that mattered.
Most smart rings have the essentials: resting heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV) for stress and energy recovery, blood oxygen (SpO2), skin temperature, breathing rate, and calories burned. A few, like Oura, give you automatic workout detection via the accelerometer.
Then you have some pretty intense promises. Several 2024 Kickstarter smart rings promise blood pressure monitoring, and electrocardiograms (ECG) for irregular heart rhythm (AFib) alerts are on the way. The YogiFi smart ring Kickstarter lists smoke and food detection as “coming soon,” while the Ringo smart ring has body composition analysis for body fat.
The popularity of smart rings will depend on their accuracy, not an exhaustive list of data. Consumers are smart enough to notice the difference between accurate results and vague “wellness” diagnostics that you can’t trust, and no one should rely on blood pressure or AFib data that isn’t FDA-approved.
Aside from this disclaimer, wearable blood pressure and passive AFib monitoring would be a industry-shifting feature that would immediately appeal to millions of people over 50 as an early warning system, making smart rings a real alternative to smartwatches for people who want a stripped-down experience.
The question is which smart ring brand can be the first to use both functions. Early Galaxy Ring leaks suggested it would have blood pressure monitoring, but Samsung has added blood pressure monitoring to the Galaxy Watch 4 and has yet to receive FDA approval for use in the United States. This could also apply to the Galaxy Ring.
NFC tap-to-pay (with authentication)
This should be an easy one. You can buy a cheap NFC-enabled ring on Amazon for much less than a typical smart ring. The problem is the inability to add a PIN or other method to authenticate a payment, which is probably why most major smart rings don’t support it.
I have a possible solution in mind for this: users will need to enable tap-to-pay in the companion app after putting on the ring, with a PIN. The moment the wear detection detects that you take off your ring, the NFC function is automatically disabled until you switch it on again. This way, someone can’t just take a ring from your hand or bedside table to go shopping.
I don’t know if this is possible, but it would allow smart rings to add contactless payments, so someone would have to physically drag your hand to an NFC reader to commit fraud.
Touch or gesture control
Samsung patents show that the Galaxy Ring is used as a controller for its XR headset. iMore describes an Apple Ring patent involving gesture controls such as “squeezing, waving, pointing and tapping a palm” followed by the ring controlling other Apple devices. Additionally, a few Kickstarter rings promise touchpads or gesture controls.
If a ring touchpad triggers shortcut actions on your phone with a double tap or long press, that can be very useful! The same goes for simple gestures like pinching or tapping with the palms, which you probably won’t use in real life. On the other hand, I imagine a small touchpad would be quite finicky and prone to false positives, or gestures being activated accidentally.
That said, Circular also seems to have covered this to some extent with a “button” that can be used for things like turning off vibrating alarms on the bezel.
Anyone with an Android smartwatch or Apple Watch with proper touch controls and screens wouldn’t replace their watch with a bezel for these replacement tricks. So I’m not sure if they qualify as great features or if companies are simply trying to justify the “smart” in smart rings.
A new, special style
I’ll quickly add to my list with something that isn’t a “feature” but is more important than anything else. Most smart rings are chunky, spartan, and not particularly distinguishable from each other. However, aesthetics matter, and smart rings should have a certain look that people accept every day.
Apple Watches have only succeeded because Apple has convinced everyone that squircles are stylish and distinctive. Android watches mimic classic timepiece designs. Either way, people accept them not just because they are about the same size as a regular watch, but because they have come to accept that signature style.
That’s why companies need to pick their battles and add enough smart ring features to make them indispensable, but not so full of half-hearted gimmicks that it becomes ugly and unreliable. I’m curious to see which smart ring is the first to have a balanced style that appeals beyond tech circles. It could be Oura or Samsung, but time will tell.