Samsung may have given away its “one more thing” too soon. Korean Samsung users found icons depicting what looks like a ring you’d wear on your finger in the Galaxy Wearable app this week. The discovery since sparked discussions about whether this means the Samsung Galaxy Ring will debut next year. I hope they do because I’d rather sleep with a ring than a smartwatch to track my metrics.
This isn’t the first rumbling we’ve heard about a Samsung smart ring, which is why it’s exciting. Earlier this year, the company filed a patent with the Korean Intellectual Property Right Information Services titled “Galaxy Ring.” It described the ring simply as a device for “measuring health indicators and/or sleep.” The rumor fell on the heels of Samsung partnering with Natural Cycles for period tracking, which factors in body temperature to deliver advice and seems precisely the intended use case for a smart ring. But this is familiar territory for Samsung, as it’s been exploring the idea of a smart ring since at least 2015. There’s even a patent filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), adding credence to this random ring asset floating around Korean forums.
9to5Google found additional evidence of the Galaxy Ring. The site’s code sleuths confirm the name “Galaxy Ring” in the Galaxy Wearable app as a reference to a specific product. The app also features “strings regarding Bluetooth connectivity” specifically for the Galaxy Ring, including evidence of the prompts that appear as you’re syncing data between devices.
Leaks are fun to track because they offer breadcrumbs leading to what’s to come. The idea of Samsung launching a smart ring is exciting because it could help make the category mainstream, meaning more competition would sprout alongside it. The only well-known smart ring is the Oura Ring, which has become a standard for the product category and remains primarily unchallenged. At least a Samsung smart ring would sync up with Samsung Health, which can then share data with other Android apps like Google Fit and Strava.
Samsung has a bevy of smart sleep-tracking features that, I’m sure, are very informative and helpful for understanding how you rest. But I wouldn’t know about any of that firsthand because I can’t sleep with a smartwatch for the life of me. I welcome the onset of smart rings if only because maybe then I’ll finally have some aggregated data on why I wake up in a pool of sweat every morning.