Everything We Know (so Far) About Samsung’s Galaxy Ring
If you’ve been following Samsung’s latest major event, Unpacked 2024, you may have seen an interesting and unexpected teaser. Following the company’s news about the Galaxy S24 series, Samsung briefly introduced the Galaxy Ring, a new wearable device designed to be worn as a ring.
And once my interest was piqued, the company ended the entire show. He clearly had no plans to say anything about the Galaxy Ring, just to alert the world to its existence. However, now, less than two months after the release of Unpacked, the company is offering a more detailed look at its upcoming wearable device.
Samsung has chosen Mobile World Congress 2024 as its next platform to discuss the Galaxy Ring. The main benefit of the ring, like other smart rings, is the lack of distractions: there’s no display to check or fiddle with, and no device-specific notifications. It’s just a data collector running quietly on your finger, day and night.
As you’d expect from a smart wearable, Galaxy Ring’s sensors can track heart rate, breathing rate, and sleep, including sleep movements and the time it takes to fall asleep. This data is combined into what Samsung calls “My Vitality Score,” based on a University of Georgia model that will tell you how “productive you can be.” (Think twice before your company offers you a Galaxy Ring “for free.”)
The ring can also report new ” booster cards ” in the Health app, which aim to give you insight into your health and how you can improve it in certain areas. Additionally, it comes with a menstruation and fertility tracking feature, building on Samsung’s existing partnership with Natural Cycles . This data, your Vitality Score, and the rest of the ring measurements will be located in the Samsung Health app.
According to The Verge’s hands-on experience , the Galaxy Ring comes in a variety of sizes, ranging from “5 to 13,” with S to XL branding on the inside. The prototypes currently come in three colors: platinum silver, black ceramic, and gold, which The Verge’s Allison Johnson says resembles her wedding ring.
However, Samsung doesn’t want you to think that the Galaxy Ring is a smartwatch replacement. As Wired reports , the company claims sleep tracking improves when users wear both the Galaxy Ring and Galaxy Watch to bed. Of course, it’s pretty convenient for the company to sell two devices instead of one, but it will be interesting to see how well the Galaxy Ring stacks up against other Samsung and Android devices. (As you’d expect from a Samsung device, the Galaxy Ring is Android-only.)
That’s all we really know for now. Samsung hasn’t revealed specific specifications, including what sensors the Galaxy Ring has or how long the battery lasts. It’s an interesting device, but until the final version hits the market later this year, we won’t know how it will compete against competitors like Oura .