Apple Is Working On A Brand New Kind Of Device

We’re entering the era of a new kind of gadget, and it sounds like Apple may be getting in on the action early.

It’s the time of the smart ring, and a recently-surfaced patent spotted by ithome looks into how we might end up using the Apple ring.

The filing’s diagrams show a handful of ways gestures could be interpreted, and used as a control method.

These work using several techniques. There’s a capacitive interaction when the outside of the ring touches another digit. It appears to use some form of pressure sensor inside the ring, to be able to tell when pressing, for example, forefinger against thumb causes a muscle contraction.

The diagrams also show the Apple Watch being used to sense the ring’s position relative to the watch, thereby able to tell when a finger is move across the other hand’s palm.

These would presumably be in addition to the more common combination of an accelerometer and gyroscope, dubbed a “3D accelerometer” in the popular Oura ring.

Such additional features open up the Apple Ring as a potent controller for the Vision Pro headset, which is currently controlled using your eyes and a basic finger pinch gesture. Playing “rock paper scissors” is another easy-to-understand contextualization.

One big caveat applies here. Patent applications should not be taken as a indication work has been done beyond that expressed in the application itself. This does not, for example, mean Apple has a working prototype of the Apple ring, with all these features currently operational.

They are interesting features, though, as they are not present in current smart rings like the Oura or Evie Ring, and there’s so sign of them in the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Ring either.

This is not the first I’ve heard of the Apple Ring, which has been rumored for months.

A February report in Electronic Times suggests Apple wants to make an unobtrusive watch that is easy to wear 24/7. That’s a pretty important factor for sleep tracking.

These early reports paint the picture of a ring that is fairly similar to what we have today, with a focus on health, sleep tracking and basic activity tracking.

However, this need not rule out the sort of additional features outlined in the patent reports, apart from potentially the tech used to tell when making a pinch gesture (or similar) causes a muscle contraction.

2024 is shaping up to be a “year of the smart ring” of sorts. Samsung and Honor have confirmed plans for their own. This category is not actually new, though. Oura launched the the public in 2015 with a Kickstarter campaign. It’s currently on its third generation of hardware, with the fourth expected this year.