Samsung’s Galaxy Ring: Who’s This Mysterious Health Wearable For?

At the beginning of the year in her January Event unpackedSamsung is teasing the new one Galaxy Ring wearable as the next gadget in its mobile range. As of mid-year, we still haven’t heard much more about the device, with no official release date or price announced. While we could hear more at Unpacked’s next foldable showcase event, which usually happens in July or August, we’re left curious how its mysterious finger-wearable product fits into Samsung’s plans to grow its health and wellness ecosystem , which makes us wonder – who is the Galaxy Ring for?

In the company’s words, the Galaxy Ring is another device in a network of wearables and phones that feeds data into the Samsung Health app. “I think you have to look at the ring as one of many steps towards multi-device engagement,” said Hong Pak, Samsung’s vice president and head of the digital health team for the mobile business CNET’s Lisa Eadicico.

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So that’s another way to track the kinds of personal data that goes into Samsung Health: sleep, nutrition, activity, and stress. Specifically, it’s a product for someone who might not want a Galaxy Watch or other wearable on their wrist, but still wants to monitor their own health and might find a ring less cumbersome to wear.

“A ring can be less obtrusive than a watch, and the finger provides a better physiological location for some health metrics than the wrist,” Avi Greengart, president and lead analyst at Techsponential, which also got a preview with Samsung’s Pak, told CNET .

Samsung expects that some users may want both a ring and a watch, while others will choose one or the other, Greengart said. Some might even pick up a ring because they like the look, which Eadicicco describes as a sleek, minimalist band resembling a chunky metal groom’s ring (the sensors are stacked on the inside).

“Personally, I’m very excited about this device because I’ve been looking at rings myself and found a lot of them to be quite bulky, and the Galaxy Ring might actually be perfect for me, especially since I’m already using the Galaxy Watch 6 classic,” said Anschel Sagg , principal analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy.

Given the smartwatch’s display and array of sensors, Sag doesn’t see people replacing them directly with fitness rings. Instead, they’ll fill in the gaps to provide health data when the watches aren’t being worn, such as when they’re charging overnight. Even better would be if the Galaxy Ring just works without a lot of setup, and Sag thinks it probably won’t need a new app on Samsung phones and will integrate well with other health data.

While smartwatch fans demand sharper and brighter displays to improve interaction, there’s another contingent of tech users who are happy with devices that do everything quietly in the background. The Galaxy Ring may appeal to those who want to track their health data but don’t want another mini-phone gadget vying for their attention.

“The idea behind such rings is not so much to be cheaper than smartwatches, but instead to be a much smaller and more discrete device for use cases like sleep tracking,” said Brian Ma, vice president of device research at International Data Corporation.

The Galaxy Ring could also be for a more limited group of people who want to track their health using the company’s own Samsung Health app, but have an iPhone and therefore can’t connect to Samsung’s more advanced wearables and watches. (The Galaxy Watch line is Android-only from the company partnered with Google in 2021 to use Wear OS 3 software.)

Samsung hasn’t released pricing, nor has it given any indication of how much the Galaxy Ring will cost or what kinds of health features it will offer compared to other health wearables. As such, it’s hard to predict how the Galaxy Ring will stand out and appeal to its core user base — but given the market, we can speculate who will most want to sign up for Samsung’s next gadget.

What the market has to offer for the Galaxy Ring

The elephant in the room is that other health tracking rings exist, mostly Hooray and Monavo’s Evie, which were adopted by celebrities and athletes, but so far have not been widely distributed among the general public. It won’t be easy for Samsung to compete, but the company has economies of scale and an existing ecosystem of other devices that should give it flexibility, Forrester vice president and principal analyst Julie Ask told CNET.

“Oura started as hardware. Now they’re subscribing to pay for more insights,” Ask said. “Samsung can just sell the hardware… and at a lower price than Oura.”

Like any other gadget, price dictates perception and people need more convincing to buy expensive products – especially those in a category that is relatively new to the market. A Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 which starts at $300 is easily compared to $400 Apple Watch 9 or $450 Garmin Venu 2but less easy to line up against Oura ringwhich starts at $300.

So it matters what price Samsung sets for the Galaxy Ring, Ask said. If it’s $100 to $200, tech fans might be more inclined to buy and try it, even if it ends up in the sock drawer in a few months. If it’s over $300, they’ll need to know its value before they buy.

They’ll be more convinced when they see it in action, and we expect to hear a lot more about the Galaxy Ring when Samsung gets ready to launch it. But beyond the price and technical specifications, Samsung will have to prove that the Galaxy Ring is easy to use. Most people depend on an engagement strategy — think of those annoying but effective reminders to stand — that uses a variety of motivations like gamification, competition, coaching, support, etc., Ask said.

Samsung has confirmed that its Samsung Health app will get a new feature called Booster Cards, which provides insight into your health readings. If your sleep score is low, a card might tell you it’s because you’re tossing and turning, for example.

Therein lies the opportunity for Samsung to capture a segment of fitness-conscious consumers who want a wearable device that’s intuitive and easy to use – and that will provide more accurate health information than the solutions we currently have.

Tap into AI and conquer the market

Since existing wearable health rings collect health data to phones, and Samsung uses its Samsung Health app on phones as a link for fitness and health metrics, it makes sense to expect the Galaxy Ring to do the same. The other question with Samsung’s new gadget is how it will take advantage of advances in paired phones – which in 2024 means generative AI.

The Samsung Galaxy S24 phones which launched in mid-January, all feature generative AI capabilities such as Search circle and Generative editingall packaged into a package called Galaxy AI. With all the AI ​​generation features announced in Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 that powers the S24 series, it would make sense to have some of that functionality in the Samsung Health app and work with the data collected by the Galaxy Ring.

Read more: How Samsung’s Galaxy AI features compare to Google and Apple

Again, Samsung’s tease of the Galaxy Ring was so sparse that there’s no way to glean any confirmation of generative AI features or what impact it might have on the previously announced Galaxy AI features of the S24 series. But given Samsung’s investment in this area, it would make sense to use this with more data collected by the Galaxy Ring.

“[The Galaxy Ring] needs to expand the market while engaging with the expanding ecosystem of AI devices,” Gartner analyst Ranjit Attwai told CNET.

And while Apple has yet to announce AI health tracking features, Google is gearing up to use AI-powered health insights in its Fitbit devices when it launches Fitbit Labs feature later this year. AI might not just be a standout for the Galaxy Ring, it might be the bare minimum it needs to keep up with the features coming to this year’s health wearables.

Samsung will need more than a smartwatch and a ring to firmly establish itself in the fitness wearables category, notes Forrester’s Ask. They will have to educate people and build that market. This starts with convincing them of the usefulness of the Galaxy Ring.

“They will need an exceptional digital experience that makes setup easy, offers incredible insights and one that drives effective consumer engagement,” Ask said. “[That’s] hard to do.”