Speaker 1: The hottest thing right now in health tech is the smart ring. So many rings are popping up at tech shows. Samsung’s got a ring and I got into wearing a smart ring, but where is the apple ring? Apple is researching a smart ring. There are multiple patents, so clearly someone at Apple is cooking up ideas and Apple’s version could be a lot different than what we see today since I began using a smart ring. This one I have is called the ev. I am convinced that this may be the most useful personal gadget [00:00:30] to come along in a while and it can fix many of our everyday tech annoyances and level up the current health and sleep track and abilities of the Apple Watch. So Apple, I want to give you the finger, this finger, this finger, the index finger. That’s my smart ring finger.
Speaker 1: Let’s talk about the apple ring. I’m Bridget Carey and this is one more thing. We are in the year of the Smart Ring. It is a device you wear to track your health, but it isn’t as intrusive as a smart watch screen that pings [00:01:00] you all the time and it doesn’t need to be charged as often. Samsung is coming out with the Galaxy ring in three different colors. Reports say it could be out later this year, but details are still scarce. There’s also the Maze Fit Helio, which is supposed to come out in the next few months and the battery is said to last a week before it needs a recharge. Brand new this year is Evie and it’s pretty stylish. It’s designed with women’s health in mind and I started wearing it in January at CES. The battery lasts about four days and it tracks sleep, [00:01:30] heart rate, blood oxygen levels and steps without you having to think about it because frankly there’s enough for me to think about.
Speaker 1: There are a few other ring makers too. There’s Ultra Human and Ring Con and all of them are trying to outshine the aura ring, which is the ring leader you might say. Although it is worth noting that Aura does require a monthly subscription and some of the others popping up like the EV do not need a subscription and that makes the competition right now. Very interesting. The EV is also getting regular software updates [00:02:00] and tweaks and this month it just pushed an update to improve sleep tracking. The company tells me it’s listening to customer feedback to make adjustments and that makes me feel like everything is still very fresh in this space. A smart ring doesn’t necessarily replace a smartwatch. You can just wear one or the other. Companies who make both will say it’s better to have both because multiple data sources can give you better results.
Speaker 1: It’s higher quality data. Samsung Vice President Han Pack told CNET quote, the performance [00:02:30] of sleep staging goes up when both devices are worn and that means that it’s better at telling which sleep stage you’re in when you have multiple sensors. Apple has been granted multiple patents when it comes to smart rings and although patents don’t mean that an apple ring is going to become a real product, they do give us clues to what Apple wants a ring to do. Several years ago an apple ring seems like just a small Apple watch a patent application in 2015 detailed a ring that had a screen [00:03:00] and a microphone for voice controls and a camera. That’s a bit much in 2019. Another patent mentioned a ring could read hand gestures and it had a little dial like the Apple watch crown. It could unlock a Mac computer just like the watch can do now, so you could use it for security, but more patents came out in 2023 and they touched on touch one talked about how the ring would know if your thumb and your index finger touched kind of like what we do now with the Apple Watch and double tap or pinching to [00:03:30] control a Vision Pro One patent described the ring as having a rotating outer rim, like a scroll wheel, but in the ring itself there’s also a mention of haptic feedback or using the ring to control other devices so it could control music on headphones or interact with the laptop or turn on a light or even change TV channels.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of possibilities that could take the apple ring to something beyond just a health tracker and maybe turn the finger into a remote control [00:04:00] of sorts all because of how many devices Apple has in its ecosystem. When gesture controls are in our devices, it makes technology an extension of our bodies and that takes all of these concepts to a new level. Apple needs to get there. It’s just a matter of when I started tracking my sleep with the EV smart ring and I liked how I could just wear it to bed without doing anything special. I don’t have to turn on any settings, it just needs a quick recharge every three or four days, but that’s it. The Apple Watch can track your sleep, [00:04:30] but it was a little tricky for me at first. There are multiple settings you need to have turned on to get your sleep data and during setup you can find yourself bouncing through different menus.
Speaker 1: Now if you don’t mind wearing an Apple Watch to bed, this is how to get sleep tracking to work smoothly inside the Apple Watch app. You want to go into sleep settings, turn on track, sleep with Apple Watch, but you ain’t done yet. That alone won’t do it To get any data, you have to have sleep focus mode turned on in the iPhone while [00:05:00] you sleep and you should also set a sleep schedule. Go on over to the health app in the iPhone, set your schedule when you want to wake up and then click on full schedule and options. This is where you have to toggle on use schedule for sleep focus. This is going to tell the watch roughly when it should be tracking your sleep and it’s okay if your set schedule isn’t perfect. Apple can track a bit around your usual timeframe as long as you’re wearing the watch to bed and sleep focus is on.
Speaker 1: I still like the simplicity of just wearing a ring to bed instead of having [00:05:30] all of these phone settings turned on, but the point of Apple’s system is to help you get in a sleep mindset and help you with a routine reminder. If you need even more help in getting in the mood for sleep, try asking your home pod speaker to play sleep sounds. You can ask Siri to play ambient sounds or ask for things like white noise, forest, ocean, rain, or fireplace sounds. There are several you can play with. I have terrible habits and my sleep
Speaker 2: Routines are garbage, but maybe someday I’ll use these tools to get better. [00:06:00] One can hope. It’s an interesting year to see how the smart ring scene is shaping out and Apple doing a ring just seems like such a natural next step for controlling things like the Vision Pro or all the other Apple gadgetry and subscription services, but there’s no indication that these patents would ever come true or that Apple is manufacturing anything right now, so I wouldn’t lose sleep over it. Let me know what you think of smart rings and if you use them or what would make you want to try one out, and I’ll catch you next time with one more thing to talk [00:06:30] about in the world of Apple.