© Smartprix/Presse-citron
While Samsung excels in the field of connected watches, the firm is considering an entirely new category of wearables: connected rings. The idea is not new in itself. For example, we saw, a few years ago, a ring transforming your hand into a telephone receiver to take calls and communicate, partly relying on the transfer of sound by the skeleton.
Since then, several manufacturers have launched products. Among the latter, we currently find either sports activity trackers with health sensors like the Oura Ring 3, or rings dedicated to contactless payment. Products that cost, although being significantly less capable, as expensive as a connected watch. A paradox which obviously pushed Samsung to put a team of engineers on the job. A first patent has been officially filed in South Korea.
< /p>© Samsung/Korean Patent Office/Lemon squeezer
Very concretely, we expect a product like the Galaxy Watch to combine several features already present in other separate similar products. Thus, the new ring could be permanently connected to your smartphone and provide you with notifications.
While allowing you to track your health, physical activity and sleep data – and allow contactless payment. The icing on the cake would be to be able to directly use the ring to answer calls as we have already seen on certain products in the category.
In addition, the Galaxy Ring could integrate a set of accelerometers allowing it to be used as a controller/joystick for other products, such as virtual reality headsets. In fact, in the diagrams accompanying the first patent around the ring, Samsung includes various sensors that could enable this type of functionality.
There is at least talk of an electrocardiogram sensor as in the Galaxy Watch and a PPG sensor that can analyze several blood variables such as oxygenation rate. The list of functions of the ring should become clearer during development in the coming months.
< /p>© Bing AI x Journal du Geek
The Galaxy Ring is produced at the initial stage of its development. Giving a release schedule is therefore quite risky – we can just hope that Samsung will make its ring official sometime in 2024.
The price at which Samsung could offer the Galaxy RIng is equally speculative. This depends, among other things, on its functionalities and the positioning that Samsung wishes to adopt on this product. Given that most current connected rings are sold between a few dozen euros and nearly €400, we can estimate that the product, supposed to be more complete than what already exists, is offered rather at a lower price. at the high end of this price range, somewhere between €250 and €400.
The product can potentially be more expensive, provided that the proposition is sufficiently convincing, efficient, complete and useful .
At the moment, little information is available on the Galaxy Ring technical sheet. We just know thanks to the patent document that Samsung is seeking to integrate ECG and PPG sensors into the watch.
This will necessarily have a battery, as well as a mobile chip – ; in other words an SoC specially adapted to the product, in the style of what Samsung can already integrate, for example in its True Wireless Galaxy Buds headphones.
In addition, around mid-July 2023, The Elec took over another Samsung patent which also speaks of a mysterious connected ring alongside virtual reality technology. This information seems to begin to confirm the possibility of using the Galaxy Ring as a controller for augmented and virtual reality.
The available documents only give a very general idea of the design of the final product. We just know that the device will look like a classic ring (probably a bit designer). The interior will carry the sensors, and the rest of the elements including the battery will be integrated into the body of the device.
We hope that Samsung will have managed to keep a fairly thin and discreet design while delivering approximately correct autonomy. Note in passing that Samsung is not the only one on the scene within Big Tech. We are lending Apple a similar project.
09/18 Name and release date confirmed?< br />
The media 9to5Google discovered several important information about the Galaxy Ring in the Galaxy Wearables application. Journalists discovered in the code the mention of Galaxy Ring, which leaves very little doubt about the final name of the ring. Especially since the application indicates an arrival for 2024. There is therefore a good chance that the Galaxy Ring will steal the show from the Galaxy S24.