While it’s arguable that smart rings have better tracking functionality than a smart watch, watches have an advantage that rings do not: They can be adjusted to fit any wrist size. Well, that might be a concern of the past now. Samsung has filed a patent that suggests adjustable rings could be coming soon — so the need to get the exact right ring size can be tossed out the window.
First spotted by the Dutch website Galaxy Club, this patent shows a smart ring with a segmented interior, likely made of elastic. When pressure is applied, these segments can widen the size of the ring. While it doesn’t result in a huge margin, even a small amount of movement is significant in a historically rigid design. The patent shows three different variants, each with a different number of interior segments: three, four, and eight.
An adjustable ring holds obvious benefits, but it could also reduce the manufacturing cost of the smart ring. Samsung could cut costs and pocket the difference, or those savings could trickle down to customers with this next generation of Galaxy Ring. At the present moment, Samsung has nine different ring sizes to choose from (size 5 to size 13), but an adjustable interior could potentially reduce the number of SKUs Samsung needs to produce.
This patent has just come to our attention, but Samsung originally filed it back in December 2023. The current Galaxy Ring launched in July of this year, so the patent was filed a decent amount of time before its release; however, it could take longer than a few months to implement a design like this. On its own, a patent might not mean anything, but we know Samsung plans to step it up in a big way for the Galaxy Ring 2. An adjustable fit would be just the thing to set it apart from the competition.
