Samsung Galaxy ring leaks reveal more about the health tracking features

03/07/2024

The Galaxy ring will launch in the coming months (The Independent)

We’re expecting Samsung to fully reveal the Galaxy ring at its Unpacked event on 10 July, but many of the smart ring’s health tracking features have already leaked online.

Tech site Android Authority discovered code in the latest version of the Samsung Health app related to Galaxy ring features, including stress tracking, heart rate monitoring, period tracking and skin temperature readings.

First teased by Samsung at the tech giant’s annual Unpacked event in January, the Galaxy ring will be the first smart ring Samsung has ever made. The company filed a preemptive lawsuit against the market-leading Oura ring, seeking a declaratory judgment that could stop Oura from filing a patent claim against Samsung when it releases the Galaxy ring – something Oura has previously done against competitors like Circular and Ultrahuman.

Samsung’s filing included a mention of the Galaxy ring’s release date. The unobtrusive smart ring – which promises to monitor your health data and provide insights based on your metrics throughout the day and night – is set to join a steadily growing wearable market when it launches, according to the filing, this August.

The Independent was one of the first outlets to see a prototype of the Galaxy ring in early February, with our tech critic David Phelan going hands-on with the smart ring. While we don’t have a firm release date for the Galaxy ring, the court filing has given us a release month, and new leaks suggest that it could cost as much as the Oura ring, with a subscription included. Keep reading for all the latest news and rumours, from its price, specs and features to its design and release date.

Samsung Galaxy ring release date: When could the smart ring launch?

Thanks to Samsung’s preemptive court filing against Oura, we now know the Samsung Galaxy ring is expected to launch in August this year. The lawsuit also confirmed that the Galaxy ring was fully finalised in mid-May and that it’s expected to go into mass production in mid-June.

In May, the upcoming wearable appeared as an option in the One UI battery widget on phones, suggesting that Samsung was laying the groundwork to release the Galaxy ring imminently.

Until the court filing, the only thing we knew about the Galaxy ring release date was that it would launch in the second half of the year. Samsung’s head of B2B wearables Daniel Seung revealed in a (now deleted) LinkedIn post that a new health and wellness wearable would be released in the second half of 2024.

We presume the Galaxy ring will be fully revealed in late July at the company’s Galaxy Unpacked event. Samsung hosts two Galaxy Unpacked events every year – one in January, where it focuses on its S-line of smartphones, and one in July, where it tends to focus on its foldable phones, smartwatches and tablets. The Galaxy ring would fit nicely into this summer Unpacked event.

Samsung Galaxy ring price: How much could the smart ring cost?

(Samsung )

When the Galaxy ring was unveiled in January, little was said about the price tag, but we are expecting it to be an expensive bit of kit, given you have to fit a bunch of sensors into a tiny band. According to the latest rumour, that might be the case.

Tech tipster Yogesh Brar has alleged on X (formerly Twitter) that the Samsung Galaxy ring will cost 35,000Rs in India and will cost between $300-$350 (£235-£275) in the US. That’s around the same price as the Oura ring.

He also told Android Authority that he believed the Samsung Galaxy ring could come with a monthly subscription of less than $10 in the US, according to his sources. That lines up with a rumour from CNBC below.

That lines up with our own speculation. The Oura ring, which is the gold-standard model right now, starts from £200 and can cost as much as £540, while the Ultrahuman ring costs £349, and the more budget-friendly Circular ring costs £199. It would make sense if the Galaxy ring cost around the same price.

According to CNBC, Samsung is considering a subscription service for the Galaxy Health app. While this doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll have to pay a subscription fee for the Galaxy ring, it’s a real possibility. Oura employs a subscription fee for its smart ring. On top of the cost of the ring itself, you also have to pay a monthly £5.99 fee to access all its most useful premium features.

Samsung Galaxy ring features and specs

An analysis of the Samsung Health app by Android Authority seems to reveal many of the Galaxy ring’s health-tracking features. They include heart rate, sleep, snoring and period tracking, as well as skin temperature sensors. These are all features we expected to see in Samsung’s first wearable ring.

We first received reports that Samsung was working on a smart ring back in 2022 when an article from Korean publication Naver suggested the tech giant had commenced development of the wearable with multiple companies.

In the report, Naver said the ring would include an ECG and PPG sensor – both are included in the Oura ring – and enable the ring to monitor the wearer’s temperature and heart rate. In an interview with CNBC, Hon Pak, the head of digital health at Samsung, said the ring will be able to track your heart rate, respiratory rate, movement made during sleep and the time it takes a person to fall asleep once in bed. These are all features currently available on the Oura ring.

(Samsung )

As with most smart rings, there is a bigger emphasis on sleep than fitness. Pak told Wired that the Galaxy ring won’t be able to auto-detect workouts at launch, which is something the Oura ring can do (although we found this to be a bit haphazard anyway). It will, however, be able to track and predict fertility.

A real game-changing feature will be payments. The McLear RingPay is the only smart ring that can make contactless payments on NFC terminals, but there are fees and limits, and it can only make payments – not track sleep or anything else. “We have a whole ... team that is looking at that. But I think clearly looking at multiple different use cases for the Ring beyond just health, for sure,” Pak told CNBC when asked about contactless payments.

At the end of May, the Galaxy ring cleared FCC certification, and the FCC filing gave us details about the ring’s battery life. According to the filing, the ring’s battery life will differ based on the ring size you opt for. The smallest Galaxy ring will have a 17mAh battery, while the biggest ring size will boast a 22.5mAh battery, though this shouldn’t make too much of a difference in practice. But it will reportedly last up to nine days on a single charge.

Pak revealed two main features of the Galaxy ring in a Samsung blog post, published in late February. The first is a feature called the My Vitality Score, which crunches your physical wellbeing, mental wellbeing and sleep into a number, telling you how ready your body is for the day ahead. It’s basically the same as the readiness score on the Oura Ring, the Fitbit or the body battery feature on Garmin smartwatches.

The May court filing against Oura included a screenshot of the Samsung Health app, showing something called an Energy Score, which is decided based on a range of different metrics, from sleep and heart rate to activity and heart rate variability.

The second main feature is something called booster cards, which provides insights about health in order to stay invigorated throughout the day. This is something usually tucked behind a paywall on other smart wearables.

Samsung also told CNBC that it is working on a digital AI coach to help keep users on top of their health and fitness. “There’s a digital assistant coach in the future because we think that’s absolutely needed,” Pak told the publication. “Imagine that large language model, acting as my digital assistant, while looking at the context of my medical records, my physiological data, my engagement with a mobile device, the wearables during all of that ... begins to bring greater insights and personalisation opportunities.”

It will also reportedly work as a standalone device, but you’ll potentially get better data when you combine it with the Galaxy Watch 6.

Pak also hinted in his blog post that the Galaxy ring might be involved in monitoring sleep apnoea symptoms. Samsung Health can track changes in blood oxygen levels, sleeping patterns and your sleeping heart rate.

Samsung Galaxy ring design

(Samsung )

In terms of design, The Independent’s tech critic was one of the first to go hands-on with a prototype of the device in early February. “The prototypes, which I wasn’t allowed to photograph, came in a dozen sizes and four different colours, including a shiny gold and matte black. The rings had a concave outer edge that was strangely appealing to the touch,” he said. “It was light and comfortable – making it much more appealing to wear at night, for instance, than a smartwatch.”

Since the Galaxy ring preview at MWC in Barcelona in late February, more details about the ring have come to light. According to Samsung, there are three colour options — black, gold and silver, and there are nine different sizes to pick from (5 to 13). It will come with a sizing kit, just like other smart rings on the market.

ZDNet’s Kerry Wan gave more detailed notes about the Galaxy ring’s design, stating that the outer ring had an inward dip that made the wearable easier to wear, even when your fingers expand (which they often do throughout the day). It also fits differently to the Oura ring, with some having to size up at the Samsung briefing.

The company has not revealed any information on what the Galaxy ring is made out of but it told Wired that it had durability in mind. Most of the best smart rings are made out of titanium or ceramic, making them less prone to scratching, though the slightly cheaper Circular ring is made out of aluminium and carbon fibre, and is less durable than others we’ve tested.

We’ll be keeping an eye on more news about the Galaxy ring in the months ahead. For now, if you’re looking to ditch your fitness tracker for a smart ring, we rated the Oura ring as our favourite, and it has recently released new features as the Galaxy ring gears up to launch.

Oura ring, generation 3: From £299, Oura.com

(Oura)

Released in 2021, the generation three Oura Ring is the company’s most capable yet, with blood-oxygen monitoring, workout tracking, daytime heart-rate tracking and period-cycle predictions. “If you’re looking for a sleep tracker, activity tracker or just want to know as much as you can about your body, the third-generation Oura Ring will tick a lot of your boxes in one tiny package,” our writer said in their review. “With different coloured rings, it’s arguably more stylish than a Fitbit or Garmin.”