It doesn’t happen often, but Samsung managed to pull off an Apple-style ‘one more thing’ announcement at its Unpacked launch event last night.
Almost everything gets leaked ahead of events like this leaving nothing to the imagination, but the complete surprise announcement was the Galaxy Ring, a new health and wellness device you’ll wear on your finger.
Perhaps the reason Samsung managed to avoid leaks for this device is that we know almost nothing about it. Essentially just that, it’s called the Galaxy Ring and it’s a smart ring similar to the Oura Ring Gen 3.
Samsung simply said on stage: “Today we are taking the possibilities of Samsung health to the next level. By bringing Samsung Health’s cutting-edge innovations to a brand new form factor. We’ve created a powerful and accessible health and wellness device here to change the shape of future health like only Samsung can.”
It might not even launch this year and Samsung failed to even indicate when we will hear more about the device so your guess is as good as ours. Fingers crossed this isn’t a Galaxy Home situation though – Samsung announced its smart speaker in 2018 and it never came to market.
What we can do is make some assumptions on what it will be able to do as it seems likely that Samsung is targeting rivals like the Oura, which in March 2022 announced it has sold no less than one million rings.
From the brief look at the Galaxy Ring at Unpacked, we can see that the ring has several sensors on the inside. One of them is bound to be a heart rate sensor so it can measure your heart rate around the clock.
A focus on health and wellbeing suggests the device will track your steps and exercise much like a smartwatch can. The other sensors could measure blood oxygen and skin temperature.
If Samsung wants to match Oura’s flagship ring, the Galaxy Ring will need to have a battery life of seven days and be waterproof to 100m. The Ring Gen 3 is partly made from titanium and comes in eight sizes and a range of finishes.
Despite the focus on health, it’s also safe to assume the Galaxy Ring will come with an NFC chip making it easy to make contactless payments or unlock your phone without needing the fingerprint sensor.
As for price, it’s impossible to say but the Oura Ring Gen 3 is $299 so that gives a good indication if Samsung were to make the Galaxy Ring to a similar spec.