There’s a lot of buzz about Samsung’s newest wearable, but the Galaxy Ring needs to put its finger on some really important features for it to come out as King of the smart rings. Hi, I’m Lexie. Welcome to your weekly dose of all things. Mobile. Make sure to subscribe for more. Let’s get into the Galaxy Ring. What we know and how it’s probably gonna make a whole lot of other smart ring makers. Pretty scared. There are so many reasons why you might want a smart ring instead of a smart watch. It’s passively tracking your stats and metrics in the background without you needing to do anything. There’s no screen so no distractions, it’s more comfortable to wear overnight and the battery lasts a lot longer. So far, we’ve got snippets of information about the Galaxy Ring from Samsung’s sneak peaks, but it’s enough to paint a pretty good picture of what’s to come. It will likely come in a gold black or silver finish and have either eight or nine sizes. It’s Android only for now and it’s set for release in August in the US. We know it’s gonna support some new Samsung health tools like a vitality score or an energy score, which is kind of like the readiness score on the aura ring Garmin’s body battery or fitbit’s daily readiness score. It’s gonna assess your sleep activity and heart rate data and then give you a rating. Then it will also give you some tips throughout the day explaining why your score was particularly high or low. And the ring is gonna have some sort of tests. No, not algebra or geometry tests, an interactive cognitive test that will help you understand if that vitality score is accurate. No idea what that’s gonna look like yet. But we’ve seen other wearables use cognitive tests like moving your fingers when you see different colored lights appear on the screen. Samsung is also releasing a whole lot of other A I tools as part of the Galaxy Watch one U I six update. Now it’s safe to assume that some if not all of those tools are going to make it onto the ring. But for me what the Galaxy Ring really needs to set itself apart is three things, accuracy, lots of helpful health tracking features and no subscription. I cannot tell you how frustrating it is to have all your metrics locked behind a paywall. Now, the aura ring charges you $6 a month to see all of your data. Otherwise all you’re gonna see is three scores for readiness sleep and activity. That’s it. You’re already paying $300 for a smart ring at least and then you have to keep paying and paying and paying. Now, Aura is far from the only company charging for metrics. Fitbit does something similar with Fitbit premium though, you can actually get a lot more detail than the Aura Ring. If you decide not to pay for that subscription, the wop band charges $20 a month, but that actually subsidizes the cost of the device and you don’t technically pay for the band and you’ll get upgrades when they come out with a new model. But if you cancel that subscription, you gotta send the whole thing back. So please Samsung hear a girl out. Don’t lock anything behind a paywall. You’ve done such a good job keeping helpful sleep tracking features for free on the galaxy watch. So don’t go charging. Now, I’ve been testing out a lot of different smart rings that have come out and accuracy is still one of those areas where smart rings can improve. The aura ring is pretty good because it’s been out for a few years now. So it’s got that jumpstart and it’s particularly good for sleep. I’ve compared results from the aura ring with those from a clinical sleep study, which is the gold standard. What I got on the aura ring actually matched up pretty closely to the sleep study with key metrics like time asleep and stages, but other rings haven’t been as good, especially around heart rate tracking the amaze ft Helio Ring is a really interesting one because you can wear it stand alone, but it’s really gonna give you the best results when you use it with one of the company’s smart watches, particularly when you’re doing activity tracking. I’ve done several runs with the Helio Ring alone and its heart rate tracking for cardio activities is pretty laggy. Samsung has hinted it in an interview with cnet that the ring will likely work in tandem with the Galaxy watch to provide more precise metrics, particularly around sleep tracking. And of course, the Galaxy Ring is gonna have women’s health tracking but most other smart rings out there do this too. There’s even the ring which is specifically designed for women and has a different cutout design that can actually adapt to the fluctuations in finger size that happens throughout cycle or even just when you’re working out. And one last health feature that I think is gonna make the rest of the smart ring crowd run pretty scared the Galaxy Ring could have an electrocardiogram or ECG. There’s only a handful of other rings out there that have an ECG that I can think of including the prevention circular plus, please. Marketing teams when you’re coming out with product names, try and say them out loud cos it just doesn’t sound very good. Ok. But what if health tracking isn’t your number one priority? Well, the Galaxy Ring could set itself apart in some other ways reports from Korean news outlet et news say the ring could have support for wireless payments. So you can just tap the ring to pay, like you can say with a phone or a watch and maybe it could even control other devices. I can just see it now pointing my finger to turn on the TV or composing an imaginary orchestra to change tracks on my phone. This is not outside the realm of possibility. Don’t forget you can do some pretty cool things with other Samsung accessories like the S pen, including air actions and changing tracks. So the ring doing this would kind of feel like a natural extension. And another hidden feature found by GSM Arena says the ring will have an led side which will help you find it if you lose it lost mode. Yeah, that’s a thing that very few other smart rings have. So if that’s true, another big check mark for the Galaxy Ring. And another rumor is that the ring will act as a remote shutter for your phone’s camera. Again, something we’ve seen with other Samsung devices, including watches and the S pen. So I think this one is totally within the realm of possibility. Will the Galaxy Ring be the one to rule them all only time will tell? But I think a lot of these other smart ring companies will be watching it very closely and seeing just how they stack up in the meantime, are you interested in smart rings or are you even wearing one? I assume so, because you’ve made it this far into the video. But let me know your thoughts and I’ll catch you next time. See ya.
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