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It may be the most important "health management hardware" after smart watches.

Author | Moonshot
edit| Jingyu

In 2014, seven years after the iPhone redefined mobile phones, smartphones had completely become mainstream. At this time, major consumer electronics manufacturers began to look for the "second curve."

That year,Apple released the first generation of Apple Watch, and Xiaomi released the first generation of Xiaomi wristband。

Although the first generation of Apple Watch was not satisfactory, and the first generation of Xiaomi Mi Band was more like a slim electronic watch, after 2014, smart watches/bands began to enter the consumer electronics market and the public's field of vision, and also climbed onto the wrists of many consumers.

Also in 2014, the first smart ring Nod was released, but this category has never made a splash in the market and has been lukewarm for a decade. Companies that developed smart rings were either forced to close their businesses or were acquired by larger companies. Only a few small companies are still slowly launching new products in the market.

Oura Health Oy, the number one company in the smart ring industry, has been in business for 11 years and has only produced three generations of products.

Image source: Samsung

The smart ring track has never really entered the public eye, until now.

On July 10, Samsung launched the Galaxy Ring at the Galaxy Unpacked event in Paris, attracting the attention of many digital enthusiasts and technology media.

Ten years after the birth of the category, are smart rings finally going to be popular?With smart watches and bracelets already dominating people's wrists, how can smart rings break through?？

01

Galaxy Ring: Gains and Losses

Galaxy Ring comes in three colors | Image source: Samsung

Galaxy Ring comes in three high-tech colors: gold, silver, and black, with a metallic texture. The main material is a very light and thin grade 5 titanium alloy, so the weight of the entire ring from small to large can be controlled between 2.3 grams and 3 grams, no heavier than a bottle cap.The surface of the ring adopts a curved concave design, matched with a titanium metal frame, which can ensure its durability.。

In terms of functionality, the Galaxy Ring has 10ATM water resistance, which means it can theoretically be used underwater at a depth of 100 meters.The ring also contains a skin temperature sensor, Samsung BioActive biosensor, and accelerometer.The Galaxy Ring battery life can last for 7 days under 24-hour use, and Samsung also released a matching fast charging box.

Galaxy Ring starts at 399.99 Euros, and the Chinese version is priced at 3099 RMB。

Just more expensive than Apple Watch 9100 yuan。

What makes Samsung so priced is the core selling point of Galaxy Ring: AI-based health monitoring。

The three sensors on the Galaxy Ring work together to continuously monitor sleep, fitness, and heart rate. Samsung's Galaxy AI technology will also analyze the data collected by the ring to give users understandable body reports and personalized suggestions.

For example, in sleep monitoring, Galaxy Ring will analyze the user's sleep stages, sleep patterns, nighttime movement, nighttime skin temperature, as well as heart rate and heart rate variability analysis during sleep. After integrating the data, AI will then provide sleep guidance to the user.

Sleep fitness and heart rate are the core functions of Galaxy Ring｜Image source: Samsung

Sleep monitoring can be said to be the killer app of Galaxy Ring. After all, the sleeping experience of wearing a smartwatch is quite poor. Nearly 50g of weight on the wrist creates a constant foreign body sensation, just like wearing socks to sleep. Even if you can fall asleep, you will hurt your bedmate when you turn over. The heart rate monitor will also emit green light periodically, and if you wear the monitor all night, you may have to worry about battery life the next day.

Therefore, the Galaxy Ring is so light that it is almost invisible, and its battery life is measured in weeks. The most suitable application scenario is sleep monitoring, which is a non-sensing experience that other wearable devices can hardly achieve.But outside of sleep monitoring, the Galaxy Ring isn't very good.

First of all, the appearance. The product rendering of Galaxy Ring looks high-end, simple, and full of technology, but this is viewed from the perspective of a smart ring. If users want to use it as a ring or accessory, the concave design makes it more prominent than traditional rings, and the overall look is more abrupt.

Moreover, the size requirements of rings are very strict. Unlike smart watches which are usually only available in large and small sizes and can be adjusted to fit most people's wrists by adjusting the strap, Galaxy Ring provides 9 sizes from 5 to 13, which makes it much less versatile than smart watches/rings. Users need to think about which finger to wear it on when purchasing it. They may even find that it fits tightly on the index finger when they buy it, but can only switch to the thumb after successfully losing weight.

Image source: CNET

Just as the joke about tablets is "productivity before purchase, iQiyi after purchase", ordinary consumers also buy smart watches/rings for "exercise before purchase, watch after purchase". The two most basic and most commonly used functions of smart watches/rings are checking time and message/call reminders, but Galaxy Ring does not support these two functions. It has no screen or buttons, and cannot output any information intuitively.

Without a mobile phone, it can only be anormalPhysical Ring, not cyber at all。

As Samsung demonstrated at the launch event, you can use a Samsung phone to find the ring, but you can't wear the ring to find the phone. Currently, the only active interactions that users can do with Galaxy Ring are pinching their fingers twice to take photos and turn off alarms.

Galaxy Ring's gesture operations are limited to camera and alarm | Image source: Samsung

In addition to watch and reminder, the extended functions of smart watches/rings are also centered around vital signs monitoring and exercise detection, but Galaxy Ring can only measure heart rate in this regard. If the heart rate is too high, it will send an alarm message to the phone (it can't even vibrate to alarm by itself), and it can only automatically monitor walking and running. Since it has no GPS, it can't record exercise tracks. In comparison, the Xiaomi Mi Band 8, which was released last year and priced at 249 yuan, already supports monitoring of 150+ exercise modes, and mainstream smart watches also support dozens of types of exercise monitoring.

Therefore, even if you give up checking time and receiving message reminders, a consumer who pursues self-digitization or wants to buy a smart wearable device to record sports data may need to buy another smart watch/ring to wear on his wrist after buying the Galaxy Ring.

And Samsung has made it clear that Galaxy Ring will not support iOS and can only be used on Android phones., and you must register a Samsung account and log in to Samsung Health to use it. Even Galaxy AI, Find Ring, and pinch to take a photo gesture operations can only be used on Galaxy phones.

After the surprise of the launch conference, if we examine the functions of Galaxy Ring rationally and consider its starting price of 3099 yuan, it is hard to imagine who its target audience is other than digital Up owners and people who have strong requirements for sleep monitoring.

02

Why "fingers"?

All major companies have smart wearable devices in their product lines. After all, health is closely related to everyone. Apple CEO Cook once said that "physical and mental health is an area of ​​focus for Apple in the future." This trend can also be seen in Apple's advertisements and press conferences in recent years.

Apple's layout in the health field is getting bigger and bigger | Image source: Bloomberg official website

It's not that Apple has not considered smart rings. According to the US Trademark and Patent Office, Apple has applied for many patents related to smart rings, but applying for patents does not mean that there will be related products.Many of Apple's interactive patents around the ring have been applied to Apple Watch and Vision Pro.。

In fact, apart from Samsung, there are few big companies involved in manufacturing products in the field of smart rings. Instead, after Apple started the trend of smart watches, other big companies chose to enter the track of wristbands rather than rings, or directly build smart watches for their own hardware ecosystems.

The reason,The advantages and disadvantages of smart rings are so obvious that they even lead to mutual disputes.。

The small size of the ring can bring a more seamless experience, but it also limits the amount of hardware that can be accommodated inside it. Therefore, if it wants to be smaller and lighter, it has to remove the display, buttons, vibration motor... This in turn limits the function, presentation and interaction methods of the smart ring.

On smart watches/rings, you can see a lot of information by touching and displaying the screen. The small crown on the Apple Watch increases the possibility of interaction. But the Galaxy Ring can only passively receive information and act as a biometric information collector.

In contrast, Apple's strategy for Apple Watch is to "make it bigger and stronger". The Apple Watch dial has expanded from 38-42 mm to 41-45 mm, the screen ratio of the dial has become larger and larger, and more and more sensors have been packed in. It even launched a more professional Ultra product line two years ago.

At a time when every company is trying to "cram in" as many functions as possible,It is more difficult to make a product smaller than to make it larger. This is the morphological challenge faced by all smart rings.。

Moreover, wearable devices are different from other digital products. They must be mounted on the human body to be meaningful. The public's perception of rings and watches is different. Rings are more personal and private, while watches tend to show social status or practical functions. For example, many people will wear a ring for the first time on their wedding day, but they may have worn a digital watch to check time since they were young.

Compared to traditional rings, Galaxy Ring is still very "digital" and abrupt | Image source: The Verge

For ordinary consumers, smart wearable devices are not the core of digital life (usually computers or mobile phones). Galaxy Ring refuses the iOS platform, and its big selling point, AI function, is only available on Galaxy phones.

Even if Apple provides Apple Watch with a very good fitness service Fitness+, which allows the watch to be disconnected from the cellular data used by the phone, and can cache music and podcasts on the 64G watch... Galaxy Ring is obviously not enough to make a non-Samsung user pay for the Samsung ecosystem. Even if consumers really need a smart ring, other companies' products on the market have no fewer functions than Galaxy Ring, are applicable to a wider range of platforms, and are even cheaper.

Galaxy Ring data viewing is based on Samsung account and Samsung Health｜Image source: Samsung

Galaxy Ring brings innovation with its new product form, but its price of three thousand yuan and weak functions may put it in a dilemma of "the media is talking about it, but no one in the market is buying it."

In fact, the market has never been fond of smart rings.

Before the release of Galaxy Ring, according to data from the International Data Corporation (IDC), based on global market estimates,Smart ring shipments are expected to reach approximately 1.579 million units in 2024The market estimate for smart bracelets is 33.87 million units, and for smart watches is 163.4 million units.

Looking at the smart ring from the perspective of smart watch/ring users, it seems weak and incompetent, but apart from the pursuit of large and full functions, the smart ring is simple, quiet and pure, freeing consumers from wandering between large and small screens and being disturbed by constant information reminders. It is a completely passive and weak smart wearable device, and the market is still a blue ocean, lacking a large company to occupy it.

Perhaps the future of smart rings is not to make users choose between the two, but to become a supplementary device for smart watches/rings。

Just as Apple and Samsung are currently focusing on the two major fields of health and AI, more accurate and uninterrupted user data is the nourishment of AI. When Samsung users wear Galaxy Watch and Ring, check the improvement plan given by Galaxy AI on their phones, and listen to the health suggestions provided by Bixby, and when Apple users choose to take off their Apple Watch before going to bed every day, then Apple may also launch Apple Ring in the future.

Thrive Global's announcement was very high-profile | Image source: Time

Just one day before the release of Samsung Galaxy Ring, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Huffington Post co-founder Arianna Huffington published an announcement in Time magazine, announcing the establishment of artificial intelligence health company Thrive Global. The core goal of this company is to equip everyone with an "AI health coach" and use AI to provide personalized services based on each person's physical health data.

More and more companies like Thrive Global will emerge, and they may be Apple's biggest competitors.。

But back to reality, Galaxy Ring is likely to experience the same fate as the first generation of Apple Watch: the first generation of a series of products, full of creativity but lack of reputation. Or it may be the last dance of the smart ring, using sales to officially announce to the market that "people don't need smart rings", just like throwing a ring into a lake, it won't make much splash.

*Header image source: CNET

This article is an original article from Geek Park. For reprinting, please contact Geek Jun on WeChat: geekparkGO

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