There are a lot of wearables out there, more or less useful. But Samsung is about to launch a new one that might give the start to a new race: the smart rings.

Smart rings are not a new concept as they have been available on the market for quite some time, since the release of the first smart ring by Oura. However, it is the first time that Samsung announces a smart ring, called the Galaxy Ring. This was displayed live at MWC 2024, and even if visitors were not allowed to touch it, you could still see its main characteristics. First of all, it’ll be available in several colors. It would’ve been a great marketing gimmick to associate it with the one from Lord of the Rings, but maybe it was too expensive (i.e. naming it My Precious Galaxy Ring).

Few characteristics of the Galaxy Ring:

  • 9 different sizes available, from S all the way up to XL
  • 3 different colors for now, but they might add more: Black, Platinum Silver and Gold. It obviously imitates the colors of the Gold/Platinum, they’re not made of it. Who knows though, maybe they’ll have a premium version made of gold for rich customers.
  • it does not seem to have a screen for displaying notifications and other information, but I might be wrong and maybe it’s well hidden
  • it integrates loads of sensors for monitoring your health, tracking activities and more. It will even include the option to monitor your heart rate with live EKG measurements.
  • the Galaxy Ring will include the option to communicate via NFC, thus you’ll be able to make some payments using it.
  • it might integrate some of the Galaxy AI tech, makes sense since this is now part of Samsung’s marketing direction (i.e. AI)

As mentioned above, Oura sells smart rings for quite some time now. However, the Galaxy Ring doesn’t look similar to Oura’s, in fact Samsung chose a concave shape for the outside of the ring instead of the classic outside curvature.

So what problem does Galaxy Ring solve? Well, it kinds of overlaps a bit with the utility of fitness bands. Just that it looks a lot cooler to wear a ring, preferably one to rule them all.

What I didn’t see being mentioned is anything regarding the battery time. If the Galaxy Ring doesn’t have a display, it will have quite a long battery usage. But it depends, maybe they’ve added a sort of hologram to project info out of it (boy, the Star Wars vibes I get now).

There isn’t an official launch date for Galaxy Ring, however it’ll probably arrive by the end of 2024. Samsung has an event planned in July 2024 where it’ll unveil Galaxy Z Fold6 and Z Flip6, so it might be as soon as this summer we get to see the Galaxy Ring in action. Or maybe it doesn’t, maybe it’ll make the wearer invisible and corrupt their minds, forcing them to travel to the end of the world to destroy it in the fire.