If you followed Samsung's last major event, Unpacked 2024, you may have seen an interesting and unexpected teaser. Following the company's news about the Galaxy S24 series, Samsung briefly unveiled the Galaxy Ring, a new wearable designed to be worn, well, as a ring.
And just as my interest was piqued, the company ended the entire show. It clearly had no plans to actually say anything about the Galaxy Ring—only to alert the world to its existence. Now, however, less than two months after Unpacked, the company is offering a more detailed look at its upcoming wearable.
Samsung chose Mobile World Congress 2024 as its next venue to discuss the Galaxy Ring. The main benefit of the ring, as with other smart rings, is a lack of distraction: There's no display to check in on or fiddle with, nor any device-specific notifications. It's merely a data collector, operating quietly on your finger throughout your day and night.
As you might expect from a smart wearable, the sensors in the Galaxy Ring can track your heart rate, respiratory rate, and sleep, including movements during sleep and how long it takes to fall asleep. This data is compiled into what Samsung is calling "My Vitality Score," based on a University of Georgia model, which will inform you about how "productive you can be." (Think twice before your company offers you a Galaxy Ring "for free.")
The ring can also inform new "Booster Cards" within the health app, which aim to give you insights about your health and how you can improve in certain areas. In addition, it comes with period and fertility tracking, powered by Samsung's existing partnership with Natural Cycles. This data, your vitality score, as well as the rest of the ring's accrued measurements, will be located in the Samsung Health app.
According to The Verge's hands-on experience, the Galaxy Ring comes in a variety of sizes, ranging from "5 to 13," labeled S through XL on the inside. At this time, the prototypes come in three colors: platinum silver, ceramic black, and gold, which The Verge's Allison Johnson said was comparable to her wedding ring.
Samsung doesn't want you to think the Galaxy Ring is a replacement for the smartwatch, however. As Wired reports, the company claims sleep tracking is improved when users wear both a Galaxy Ring and a Galaxy Watch to bed. Sure, it's pretty convenient for the company to sell two devices instead of one, but it will be interesting to see how well Galaxy Ring pairs with other Samsung and Android devices. (As you might expect from a Samsung device, the Galaxy Ring is Android-only.)
That's all we really know for now. Samsung won't share specific specs, including what sensors the Galaxy Ring has or how long the battery lasts. It's shaping up to be an interesting device, but until the final version hits the market later this year, we won't know how it stacks up to competitors like Oura.
