Samsung Galaxy Ring: specifications, features, release date

BARCELONA – Samsung's Galaxy Ring, its latest wearable device, launches with health tracking features including heart rate and sleep monitoring, while giving users a score of their readiness for the day, it said a senior executive to CNBC.

In a wide-ranging interview, Hon Pak, head of Samsung Electronics' digital health team, discussed the company's first foray into the ring product category, considerations for a subscription model for the Samsung Health app, and his vision for an artificial technology. intelligence “trainer.”

Samsung teased the Galaxy Ring in January during the press conference where it launched the S24 smartphone. The South Korean tech giant will showcase it for the first time at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, ​​which starts on Monday.

Pak said the ring, which is equipped with sensors, will be able to give readings of heart rate, breathing rate, the amount of movement performed during sleep and the time it takes a person to fall asleep once in bed.

He also said the ring will be able to give the wearer a “vitality score” that “collects data on physical and mental readiness to see how productive you can be.”

All of this will be accessible through the Samsung Health application.

The ring will go on sale this year, but Pak did not give a timeline or price.

Pak also said the company is considering adding a feature that would allow the Galaxy Ring to make contactless payments, as is the case with smartphones.

“We have a whole… team that's looking at that. But I think we're clearly looking at multiple different use cases for the Ring beyond health, for sure,” Pak said.

The Samsung executive also said that the company is working on non-invasive glucose monitoring as well as blood pressure detection through its wearable devices.

“I think we have a long way to go,” Pak said of noninvasive glucose monitoring. Today, people use devices that pierce the skin to check glucose levels. A non-invasive way to do it would be a great step.

Samsung hopes that several devices will boost its positioning in the field of health, an area in which it has been working for several years.

Samsung has its smartphones and smart watches. The Galaxy Ring is the newest product category in health. Samsung said the decision to launch a “smart ring” was driven by its customers.

“Our own customers told us: I want options. I want to be able to have other forms of wearable devices to measure health,” Pak said. “And some want to wear the watch, some want to wear the watch and the ring and benefit from both. Some just want more simplicity.”

Pak confirmed that when the smartwatch and Ring are used together, users will be able to gain different insights into their health.

Samsung is not the first company to launch smart rings. There are a handful of other players like Oura.

Previous generations of Samsung's flagship smartphone, like the S7, have sensors that track things like heart rate. Users could put their finger on the sensor and it would give a reading. Samsung has removed those sensors on its phones, especially since it has smartwatches that offer these features.

However, Pak did not rule out the possibility of future smartphones having health sensors.

“Mobile devices are still very ubiquitous and so I think there are reasons why we might want to put a sensor on a mobile rather than having it on a wearable device,” Pak said.

Pak discussed the role artificial intelligence will play in Samsung's healthcare services. AI can help make sense of all the data these devices collect. And ultimately, Pak's goal is to have AI provide deeper insights into a person's health.

He said large language models, which are artificial intelligence models trained on huge amounts of data and underpinning applications such as chatbots, can help provide greater insights.

“Imagine that big language model, acting as my digital assistant, while looking at the context of my medical records, my physiological data, my interaction with a mobile device, the wearables during all of that… it starts to provide greater insights and personalization .opportunities,” Pak said.

“In the future there will be a digital assistant, because we believe it is absolutely necessary,” said the Samsung executive.

Pak described a scenario in which a digital assistant offers health advice in the right tone and context, saying that “our ability to change our behavior becomes much greater.”

Bixby, Samsung's digital assistant, could play a role, Pak said.

“So we're exploring a number of different ways that the human-computer interface will change over time… And so we think Bixby with voice represents an important part of that option. But we don't think it's the only option. But Bixby “Combined with great language models it can potentially be a phenomenal game changer. And obviously we're having that conversation,” Pak said.

The executive also said that the company is “considering” a subscription service for its Samsung Health app, but that the capabilities and insights it offers need to be improved before that can happen. AI assistants can help.

“If you're really going to make me pay for something, you better give me something that's more comprehensive and more complete” in terms of health information, Pak said.