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Possible price Galaxy Ring
Samsung has given us a good look at the Galaxy Ring , but it’s been pretty quiet about what it’ll charge for the smart ring. That’s likely to come to a head today, as we’re imagining Unpacked will see a big reveal about the Galaxy Ring’s pricing and availability.
In the meantime, we can only speculate on potential Galaxy Ring pricing. Most smart rings cost around $300, but that’s just the price of the ring itself. Some devices also come with monthly subscription fees if you want to get anything out of your wearable.
For what it’s worth, leaked Galaxy Ring pricing suggests you’ll pay between $300 and $350 for the Galaxy Ring. That’s a bit more expensive than the Oura Ring, but you’ll also be paying for a subscription service with that product. It’s unclear at this point if Samsung will also charge a recurring fee.
Possible color options
Color options are always a major point of interest in the run-up to major phone releases, and that’s especially true with the Galaxy Z Fold and Galaxy Z Flip, since a striking design is part of the phone’s appeal. Rumors surrounding the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Galaxy Z Flip 6 colors have been fairly consistent since the start.
Based on both rumors and a series of leaked renders that look pretty official to our eyes, it appears the Galaxy Z Fold 6 will come in pink, dark blue, and silver. Look for brighter options with the Galaxy Z Flip 6, which is expected to come in silver, green, light blue, and yellow. If none of those options appeal to you, Samsung occasionally offers exclusive colors on its website, so stay tuned.
Eat my dust
One of the most frequently cited concerns about foldable phones is their durability: People are reluctant to pay anywhere from $999 to $1,799 for one of Samsung’s foldable phones if there’s a chance the device might… well… not fold anymore. And one of the things that can bring devices to their knees faster than you might think is dust.
That’s a concern for Samsung’s current foldable phones, which have a water-resistance rating but not dust resistance. That makes potential buyers of the Galaxy Z Fold and Galaxy Z Flip wary of dust getting into their future phones and ruining the moving parts that open and close the phone.
Given that background, you can understand why my colleague Richard Pirday is excited about a feature tipped for the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Galaxy Z Flip 6. The new phones are expected to have an IP48 rating. That means the phones will be resistant to dust and can withstand a dip in water. If true, it’s an improvement that could make people a lot more comfortable about buying a foldable phone.
Meet the Galaxy Watch’s bioactive sensor
The Galaxy Watch 7 will also likely be on the agenda at Galaxy Unpacked, though Samsung has already given us a look at one of the new features coming to the watch. Samsung previewed the BioActive health sensor that will be part of its upcoming watches.
Fitness editor James Frew has the details on the BioActive health sensor , but the TLDR; version is that it’s built into Samsung smartwatches , and this upgraded version has an optimized sensor placement that should lead to more accurate readings for things like heart rate monitoring. There’s more real estate on that chip, too, along with improvements to the LEDs used to monitor your heart rate.
An Olympic setting
The timing and setting of this Unpacked is a little more interesting than your typical Samsung event. While Samsung typically holds its product launches in New York or San Francisco, this year Unpacked is taking place in Paris. And it’s happening just a few weeks before the Paris Olympics kick off.
Samsung has even moved Unpacked up from its usual late-July/early-August window so that the product launch can take place in Paris, ahead of the Summer Olympics. That’s partly because Samsung is one of the event’s sponsors. But I suspect the types of products Samsung announces today will also inform the company’s choices in settings. As I wrote over the weekend , health and fitness tracking will be front and center at Unpacked, to the point where foldable phones will likely be overshadowed.
By the way, my colleague Kate Kozuch is in Paris to attend Unpacked. You can expect her report later today.
Oura gets ready for the Galaxy Ring
If today is the day the Galaxy Ring launches — and all signs point to it being today — Samsung’s biggest smart ring competitor isn’t going to let the news lie. Just ahead of Galaxy Unpacked, Oura announced plans to bring AI features to its Oura Ring.
The recently unveiled Oura Advisor is a suite of AI-powered tools that analyze data to provide actionable advice on improving your sleep and well-being. Or as Oura puts it, the Advisor feature available to Oura Ring Gen 3 owners will use “AI to [you] reaches [your] health goals with personalized insights, recommendations, and encouragement.”
Your turn, Samsung.
Unless Samsung has a surprise up its sleeve, this is a new product. will not Showcased today at Galaxy Unpacked is the Galaxy Z Fold 6 FE. That’s the cheaper version of the Galaxy Z Fold that reportedly strips away a number of features — forget about S Pen support, for example — in exchange for a lower price.
For a while, there were rumors floating around about a potential budget foldable phone from Samsung that was set to launch at this summer’s Unpacked event. But in May, reports surfaced that Samsung had shelved work on this particular device. The problem is reportedly that Samsung was concerned about a lack of differentiation compared to the full-featured Galaxy Z Fold 6.
The FE version of the Fold might not be dead after all. There’s talk of a possible launch early next year, alongside the Galaxy S25. But that’s an Unpacked event for another time.
Galaxy AI, take two
Samsung’s current foldables — the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Galaxy Z Flip 5 — already include some Galaxy AI features, as Samsung brought the capabilities it introduced with the launch of the Galaxy S24 to recent flagships, including the latest Fold and Flip. That means capabilities like Circle to Search and Chat Assist are already part of the Samsung foldable experience.
Samsung is expected to expand its Galaxy AI capabilities at Unpacked today. We know this because Samsung told us so in a blog post last month by Won-Joon Choi, who happens to be the head of the company’s mobile R&D office in its Mobile Experience business. “Our foldable devices are the most versatile and flexible form factor in Samsung Galaxy, and when paired with Galaxy AI, these two complementary technologies will together unlock new possibilities,” Choi wrote at the time.
What form the Galaxy AI features designed for the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Galaxy Z Flip 6 will take is unclear, but at least one rumor suggests a Fold-specific capability that leverages generative image editing. According to the rumor, any drawings you create on the Galaxy Z Fold 6 will be able to be spruced up by AI tools to make them look more stylish.
This is probably just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to AI features coming from the Galaxy to Samsung phones. I think AI should be a feature that sets Samsung’s foldable phones apart from the rest.
Up close the Galaxy Ring
It’s far too early to pick an MVP of Unpacked, given that the event is still hours away. But it’s clear that a lot of attention is being focused on the Galaxy Ring, the smart ring that marks Samsung’s first entry into this new market of health trackers.
Samsung briefly showed off the ring at its Unpacked event in January, then gave us a look at different colors at Mobile World Congress in February. What Samsung hasn’t told us yet is a price or what the ring can do.
Leaks have at least filled in some details on the latter question. According to leaks, the ring should be able to measure both heart rate and stress levels, and it’s widely expected to monitor sleep patterns as well, with snore detection features to potentially diagnose sleep apnea. Other potential features include the ability to measure skin temperature and predict menstrual cycles.
Some reports even claim that the Galaxy Ring could feature an ECG sensor, as well as an additional sensor to measure blood flow. However, those rumors seem far-fetched to us.