Why everyone is talking about smart rings

Apple has a gazillion patents in a category that seems un-Applesque. Does that ring a bell?

Feb 26, 2024

So-called smart rings have been around for awhile. Most people don’t wear them.

Sure, a smattering of quantified-self enthusiasts wear them to track sleep. (Are we still using the phrase “quantified self”?)

This week, smart ring chatter is at an all-time high.

One reason is that Samsung is showing off its forthcoming Galaxy Ring product at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week.

The ring, we learned, comes in nine sizes and three colors: black, silver and gold. It weighs between 2.3 grams and 2.9 grams, depending on the size (all Galaxy Ring sizes weigh less than the market-leading Oura Ring). Bigger rings have bigger batteries, but are also bulkier to wear.

Sensors inside the rim of the ring convey information to Samsung’s Health app to measure and track sleep, activity, resting heart rate and heart rate variability and, for women, period and fertility data. The Galaxy Ring is expected to ship some time this year.

The other company driving ring chatter is Apple. The Korean publication ETNews published a rumor that Apple is accelerating smart ring development. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman also speculates that an Apple ring may be forthcoming at some point.

We know from its history of patent applications that Apple thinks different about smart rings. In addition to all the health tracking applications, Apple also sees smart rings as a gesture-controller for TVs, iPhones, iPads and Apple Vision Pro.

Other smart rings have existed for awhile, including the Circular Slim, Movano Evie, RingConn and Ultrahuman Ring Air. But with Samsung and probably Apple entering the ring ring, so to speak, we can expect smart rings to become much more widely used.