The battle to create one smart ring to rule them all is truly kicking off. In January, Samsung announced its surprise entry into the market by teasing its Galaxy Ring, which has since become one of CNET’s most highly anticipated product launches of the year.
Samsung’s decision to introduce a smart ring into its family of products is intrinsically linked to its push to be a leader in digital health. Samsung Health now boasts 64 million monthly active users, Hon Pak, Samsung’s vice president and head of the digital health team, said in a roundtable at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
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It’s against this backdrop that the company is slowly drip feeding more information about what the Galaxy Ring will offer us when it finally goes on sale. I was able to try on an early version of the ring at MWC, which was only the second time journalists have been able to examine the device up close.
I had a choice of gold, silver or ceramic black in nine different sizes. Samsung was keen to emphasize that these were still prototypes and that the specs I saw listed are unlikely to apply to the finished product. The smallest ring in the selection weighed just 2.3g, with the largest size weighing 2.9 grams. Even the larger size weighed less than the Galaxy Ring’s current closest competitor and celebrity favorite, the Oura Ring, which weighs between 4 and 6 grams, depending on the size.
The ring has an array of sensors on the inside rim, three of which were arranged in a series of raised bumps. While it was on my finger, I was aware that the bumps were there, but they caused me no discomfort at all.
My personal preference is for rings with a low-set profile so that my fingers can largely still sit flush against one another. That’s a big ask for any smart ring, which has a lot more hidden inside the metal casing than, say, my wedding ring. Even the slightly concave shape of the ring makes it feel a tad chunky for my liking, and as CNET Senior Editor…
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