Samsung’s next Unpacked event is expected to be in July. But when the company reveals its next flagship products such as foldable phones, it may be that the real attention-grabber is a wearable, the Galaxy Ring. It was teased back in January and and shown publicly a month later at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. We now know with some exactness when it will be released: in or around August. And the company suddenly unveiled what the Ring will do, too.
Samsung Galaxy Ring in gold finish.
Updated June 12 with report of extra Lost Mode feature, as well as details of weight.
The information comes from an unimpeachable source: Samsung itself, even though the company has not officially said anything about the release.
What’s more, there’s now been a report of a very cool extra feature, though Samsung didn’t mention that when it let slip some other features, as we’ll see below.
According to GSM Arena, a recent teardown of the Android Application Package Kit has revealed a clever extra. This is a Lost Mode, something extremely useful for a tiny, lightweight object like a ring. An LED light will be built into the Galaxy Ring and this will blink when the Samsung Find app is used to locate it. That’s handy if it’s somewhere nearby, and if it’s really lost, the app can lock your Samsung account so nobody else can access your information.
I have lost my Oura Ring more times than I can tell you. I’ve always found it again, by using a more primitive method. If the Ring shows up as connected by Bluetooth to my phone, then I know it’s nearby and I look harder (it is a joke in my family that I “don’t have a great search engine,” as they kindly put it). And if it’s not showing up on Bluetooth, then at least I know it’s nowhere nearby. There are apps which can find all nearby Bluetooth devices and I have turned to one of these in the past.
But a flashing light would be a neat way to solve this problem when the Galaxy Ring is nearby. When I tried the Ring prototypes on for size back in January, there was no hint that there might be an LED anywhere in the sleek concave design. So, maybe the LED is on the inside of the ring. If it’s on the outside it may still be invisible until it turns on, of course.
And this would be a feature you’d hope never to need to use.
There’s also been a new report which details a new feature that nobody had heard of before and intriguing information about the weight of the Ring. Let’s start with that.
The information comes from a Korean leaker, SuperRoader and was spotted by NotebookCheck. Here’s what they say: “The lightest model of the Galaxy Ring weighs about 1 gram. It includes a function that activates the smartphone’s camera shutter when you wear the ring and use your finger. The Galaxy Ring will be much cooler than you can imagine.”
Let’s take this apart. First of all, I completely agree that the Ring will be very cool indeed. I was the first journalist to try out the prototype ring, back in January and it looks and feels great. But I am skeptical about the weight. I tried on several sizes and although they were prototypes, none of them was significantly lighter than the Oura ring, which weighs between 4 and 6 grams. If any of the prototypes had weighed a quarter of that, I think I’d have noticed.
But I can see the other feature, triggering a camera shutter, might work, and it sounds pretty cool. Back to Samsung’s own details of what’s coming when.
Samsung has filed a suit against the Finnish company Oura, which makes the highly successful Oura Ring, a wearable which currently dominates the market for finger-borne devices.
And on page 3 of the suit, Samsung says, “Samsung has completed the design for the Galaxy Ring and expects to commence mass production by mid-June 2024. Samsung will be selling the Galaxy Ring in the United States in or around August of this year.”
Let’s dissect this. Samsung hasn’t otherwise revealed mass production dates, countries where the Galaxy Ring will go on sale and when it will be on sale. In other words, “in or around August” refers to an onsale date, not the date it’s unveiled.
Samsung is believed to be holding its next Unpacked event at some point in July, so this tallies with the new details. And it’s vague enough for me to hope that the onsale date could be as early as August 1, or even late July.
And there’s more. “Building on its extensive investment in health and fitness tracking technology, including the Galaxy Watch and the Samsung Health app, the Galaxy Ring monitors heart rate, heart rate variability, blood oxygen, movement, and sleep to provide users valuable insights and offer guidance to improve their health and wellbeing.”
Samsung has not previously confirmed exactly what the Ring would do, so this is big news. Of course, we shouldn’t expect this list to be exhaustive: Samsung may keep something up its sleeve, but this list is extensive. It also mentions an Energy Score derived from these metrics.
As for the suit itself, The Verge describes it like this: “Samsung isn’t waiting around for Oura to file any patent claims over its forthcoming smart ring. Instead, it’s preemptively filed its own suitagainst Oura, seeking a ‘declaratory judgment’ that states the Galaxy Ring doesn’t infringe on five Oura patents. The suit alleges that Oura has a pattern of filing patent suits against competitors based on ‘features common to virtually all smart rings.’ In particular, the suit references sensors, electronics, batteries, and scores based on metrics gathered from sensors.”
The good news is that the choice of smart rings for consumers is about to get bigger.