A high-tech ring that promises to replicate many of the features found in the latest crop of smartwatches, but without strapping a brick to your wrist, is now one step closer to reality. Smarty Ring, a project that launched on Indiegogo last month, has blown past its funding goal to produce a ring with a built-in LED screen that ferries information back and forth between a connected smartphone. Like the Pebble, which garnered more than 100 times as much funding on Kickstarter last year , it can display incoming caller ID, and text messages, along with updates from social networks that have been synced up using a companion app for iOS and Android. There are also physical control buttons on the side of the ring, which can be used to control apps, including your phone's camera app. Other settings let you turn on some anti-theft features, like a phone alert that goes off if the ring goes beyond a certain distance from its owner.
On paper, the ring does all this through a Bluetooth LE connection, and its creators are promising a rather dubious 24 hour battery life with standard use. That would be about on par with what Samsung boasts on the much larger (and already released) Samsung Gear smartwatch , which is just the latest in a series of wearables that aim to extend what we do with the devices that are already in our pockets. So far there have been many contenders in that arena, but nothing that's set the world on fire. One thing that could help the Smarty Ring: its creators plan to sell the watch for $275 when it arrives in stores, which is $25 less than Samsung's offering and for something that could more easily be mistaken for jewelry. Early bird buyers can also purchase it sight unseen for $175, or at a discount when bundling either four or 10 of the rings at once, with an estimated delivery of next April.
Source: The Verge
On paper, the ring does all this through a Bluetooth LE connection, and its creators are promising a rather dubious 24 hour battery life with standard use. That would be about on par with what Samsung boasts on the much larger (and already released) Samsung Gear smartwatch , which is just the latest in a series of wearables that aim to extend what we do with the devices that are already in our pockets. So far there have been many contenders in that arena, but nothing that's set the world on fire. One thing that could help the Smarty Ring: its creators plan to sell the watch for $275 when it arrives in stores, which is $25 less than Samsung's offering and for something that could more easily be mistaken for jewelry. Early bird buyers can also purchase it sight unseen for $175, or at a discount when bundling either four or 10 of the rings at once, with an estimated delivery of next April.
Source: The Verge
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