Wearables have been an expanding market for some years now, but so far the marketplace has consisted mainly of smartwatches and fitness trackers. Samsung could be about to change that though with a new electronic companion that will live not on our wrists, but rather our fingers. Here’s all we know so far about the Samsung Galaxy Ring.
When will the Samsung Galaxy Ring be released?
While Samsung did tease its new Galaxy Ring at the recent Unpacked event and then shown off in more detail at MWC 2024, there’s no official word yet on when it will be released other than ‘later this year’. But we have seen several rumours that give us some clues.
For a while it seemed that we might see the new device in June 2024, this has been adjusted though by a recent post from Korean tech site The Elec that reports mass production won’t begin until May, with an initial 400,000 units being made.
This means it’s more likely that the Galaxy Ring could debut with the Galaxy Z Flip 6 and Galaxy Z Fold 6 which are expected to arrive in July 2024. The report then says that the Galaxy Ring could be available as early as August.
How much will the Samsung Galaxy Ring cost?
There’s no information about this yet, as Samsung hasn’t announced a price range and there’s no history to go on. That being said, there is already various smart rings on the market, including the Oura Ring 3 which we have reviewed. This currently retails for a baseline price of $299 (around £250) but goes up from there if you want different materials. It also requires a monthly subscription ($5.99 or around £4.70) to unlock the most useful features.
As a relatively new category, smart rings have yet to be properly established, so we’d be surprised if Samsung comes in at a high price point. Of course, the Korean company does make some eye-wateringly premium devices (with the requisite price tag), meaning we can’t rule anything out.
At the moment around $299 is the going rate, so let’s hope Samsung can use its enormous industry clout to bring that down.
Chris Martin / Foundry
What features will be in the Samsung Galaxy Ring?
The Galaxy Ring will be sold in nine different sizes and three colours: black, gold and silver (though Samsung may give them fancier names than that).
This is similar to the Oura Ring 3 which is currently offered in eight sizes. Inside each Galaxy Ring will be a range of sensors that relay information to an app on your smartphone (it’s not clear yet if this will require a Samsung Galaxy handset).
Although nine sizes would match up with the Galaxy Ring display at MWC, the Dutch site Galaxy Club has come across model numbers for the ring which suggests there will be eight.
They are: SM-Q500, SM-Q501, SM-Q502, SM-Q505, SM-Q506, SM-Q507, SM-Q508 and SM-Q509.
You might notice that ‘503’ and ‘504’ are missing which is strange. There’s no explanation but Galaxy Club says ‘SM-Q500’ is the smallest option so the missing sizes are at the smaller end of the scale. It’s understandable that Samsung may want to keep the number of sizes to a minimum considering there are three colours.
The focus of the Ring is to be a health-monitoring device. In a recent press release from the company that outlined its vision for an intelligent health platform, it said, “As a new addition to our wearables portfolio, Galaxy Ring will offer users an all-new way to simplify everyday wellness, empowering them with greater insights and more ways to understand themselves day and night.”
“With Galaxy Ring, users can embrace an unrivalled experience during every step of their wellness journey, all while being delivered in lockstep with Samsung’s broader vision for a more connected, integrated and seamless digital wellness platform.”
Chris Martin / Foundry
With the mention of day and night, it’s reasonable to presume that sleep tracking will be one of the features supported by the Ring. In an article that outlined time spent with a prototype of the Ring, Tech Radar said that there would be different sleep analytics that you don’t normally find on a smartwatch, these could include resting heart rate during sleep, respiratory rate, night movement, sleep apnoea monitoring and sleep latency.
These will all be collated, along with other fitness and health metrics, to give the wearer a Vitality score, not dissimilar to the Readiness score that you’ll already find on the Oura Ring 3. What’s different about the approach is that Samsung will be using AI technology to work out these summaries, rather than the algorithm-based approach that most health trackers have previously employed.
Senors should comprise a heart rate monitor, Sp02, skin temperature, as well as the various sleep tracking features mentioned above. An NFC chip for contactless payments would also not be a surprise.
Samsung
From what we’ve seen so far, there won’t be any controls or buttons on the Galaxy Ring, with all interactions either conducted via the sensors on the underside of the ring which touch the wearer’s skin or via controls on the accompanying smartphone app.
Samsung has already said that the battery life of the Galaxy Ring should run to between five to nine days from a single charge (depending on which size you get), which would also suggest that the tracking features off granular controls so that you can adjust the sensitivity or which sensors remain on at all times.
There’s still plenty of mystery around the Samsung Galaxy Ring, but we shouldn’t have too long to wait before we find out whether Samsung is about to massively disrupt the wearables market.
