Tiny Tech, Big Potential: Galaxy Ring Hands-On Experience
Samsung recently launched the Galaxy Ring, one of the most talked about wearables in recent times thanks to its size. Fortunately, we were lucky enough to get our hands on it, and we had a rather interesting time with it. With that in mind, we’re going to share some of our notable experiences with the new wearable.
Convenient for Activity Tracking
The Samsung Galaxy Ring is capable of tracking your activities, with the one we used the most being the step tracker. It’s capable of tracking it rather accurately, and you won’t see a sudden dramatic increase just because you hopped into a car. All of it is done automatically without needing any kind of input, and you can view it in full by simply heading over to the Galaxy Wearable app. Just remember to connect and synchronize it to your smartphone first. Speaking of which…
Not Limited to Samsung Devices
One of the best things about the Galaxy Ring is that you don’t need a Samsung device to use it. The only requirement here is that you need a smartphone that is running Android 11 or newer, and you need to have the Galaxy Wearable app installed. This also means that this wearable will not work with iPhones and iPads, as our own Apple devices can’t even detect the ring. If we’re lucky, we might see an update somewhere down the road that would address the compatibility issue, but we highly doubt it.
Galaxy Ring is the Easiest for Sleep Tracking
Many consumers are interested in getting a reading on their own health, but when it comes to sleep, it can be a bit cumbersome to use a smartwatch. This is where the Galaxy Ring excels, as it barely takes up space when you’re wearing it. At times, we have found ourselves forgetting the fact that it’s still on our finger. Just remember to pick the right size so it’s tight enough that it doesn’t fall off easily, but not too tight that your finger would lose blood flow. To us, this is the best reason to get this ring over a smartwatch.
Not As Feature-Rich Compared to Smartwatches
Of course, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows with the Galaxy Ring as it doesn’t have as many features as your modern day smartwatch. It doesn’t have NFC, so contactless payments are out of the picture, it can’t detect your heart’s electrical signals due to a lack of an ECG sensor, and there are no vibrations, nor speakers, so it won’t be useful for notifications.
What it does have is an accelerometer for activity tracking, an optical bio-signal sensor to monitor heart rate, and a skin temperature sensor to track sleep and menstrual cycle. Essentially, it’s like smartwatches in the early days, where the features are on the simpler side. One can always consider using this in tandem with a smartwatch for a more complete experience, but it’s still fine on its own if you don’t require anything too extensive.
The Future of the Galaxy Ring
The Galaxy Ring certainly has a promising future, and I have a vivid image in mind for its succeeding models. Its natural course for evolution is pretty much the same road that smartwatches took to get all the features they have in today’s world. That could also come at the cost of cannibalizing sales for Samsung’s own smartwatches, but then again, it can cater to different groups of people and work out just fine. Some people prefer smartwatches while others may prefer a traditional watch and opt for a ring instead.
One thing I’d personally be interested in is incorporating gestures as a way to interact with a smartphone or tablet. For Samsung, it should be familiar territory as they could make use of similar gestures found on older S Pens and adapt them for the Galaxy Ring. If this ever becomes a reality, it could very well be the best wearable around but for now, we’ll just have to wait and see where the road will take us.
The Samsung Galaxy Ring has just launched in Malaysia. In case you missed the announcement, you can click right here to find out about its pricing and availability.
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