- Honor has confirmed that it is working on a smart ring
- There is currently no expected launch date for its Galaxy Ring rival
- Honor says it will also launch a foldable flip phone “this year”.
We’re not exactly short of evidence that 2024 is going to be the year of the smart ring, with the Samsung Galaxy Ring preparing to launch later this year, and now Honor has confirmed it’s also making its own Oura Ring rival.
At MWC 2024, Honor CEO George Zhao said CNBC that the Chinese company is working on a smart ring. When asked about the new wearable category, Zhao said: “Internal, we have this kind of solution, now we are working on that part, so in the future you can have the Honor ring”.
Unfortunately, that’s all we know for now, as Honor didn’t hint at a possible release date for its smart ring. But with the Samsung Galaxy Ring scheduled to launch in the second half of 2024 (with more concrete information expected in July), it’s clear that Honor will have to launch sooner rather than later if it wants to carve out its own niche.
Honor already makes affordable wearables like the Honor Band 4 and Watch 4, which connect to the Health app. And it clearly sees smart rings as a good companion for AI-powered apps, with Zhao telling CNBC: “This hardware capability will work with AI-powered apps (and) can help you tailor the professional training for you, because they have studied your habits and health data to give you professional suggestions. I think AI will transform these types of applications.”
And while Honor previously saw its international presence limited by its previous associations with Huawei, it has since seen a resurgence in China and elsewhere since Huawei sold the subsidiary in November 2020. That’s seen Honor create foldable devices like the Honor Magic V2, which we called a ‘benchmark-setting beauty’ – and it looks like Honor is just getting started.
CEO George Zhao also told CNBC that “we are preparing to launch the flip phone this year – now that we are in the final stages internally,” he said. The Magic V2 is a book-style foldable in the same vein as the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Google Pixel Fold, but this new model will be more of a rival to the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5, where the screen can fold around a horizontal axis folded.
Expect to hear more about Honor’s foldable flip phone soon, and most likely before we hear news about its Galaxy Ring rival.
Smart Rings Are Exploding, But Where Is Apple?
With Samsung and now Honor battling it out for the title of best smart ring, it’s clearly going to be an exciting year for minimalist wearables. But one tech giant that has remained characteristically silent on the subject is Apple.
Apple hasn’t given us any public hint that it’s interested in eating the Oura Ring’s lunch, though as noted by Apple Insider, they are clearly being looked at. A freshly issued patent reveals his research into a “finger-mounted device with sensors and haptics.”
While that sounds like a similar device to what Honor and Samsung are working on, the idea actually seems to be more of an Apple Vision Pro controller. The patent describes “a wearable device such as a finger-mounted device (that) can be used to collect input from a user’s fingers while the user interacts with surfaces in the user’s environment.”
As always, we can’t draw any concrete conclusions from patents, but the idea certainly comes from some of the Vision Pro’s gesture-based limitations. Could an Apple ring double as a more minimalist Apple Watch? It makes sense in theory, but so far we don’t have any evidence that an Apple-made smart ring is on the way.
Until then, Apple (just like us) will look with interest at the first generation rings from Honor and Samsung. Our hands-on experience with a Samsung Galaxy Ring prototype suggests that this technology is already quite mature, with the ring being comfortable, light and promising powerful sleep tracking powers. We’re also big fans of the UltraHuman Ring Air and Oura Ring 3.
These will clearly soon face major competition from Samsung and Honor – while other tech giants will likely show off their ring-adorned hands soon too.