The Samsung Galaxy Ring is already one of the best smart rings available and packs a lot of impressive tech into its svelte design. A new patent found by 91mobiles suggests that future Galaxy Rings could be even smarter thanks to the addition of a novel temperature sensor.
Many rings and smartwatches already have a skin temperature sensor on board, which usually measures your skin temperature overnight to help you look out for unexpected changes that might indicate illness.
The sensor covered in the patent instead measures the temperature of external objects, allowing you to take readings on demand. In the patent, the ring is shown measuring the temperature of a cup of coffee, as well as other people’s temperature, by pressing the ring against the side of the cup or forehead.
How could the sensor work?
In the patent found on the World Intellectual Property Organization website the sensor is placed on the inside of the ring on the bottom side, facing the palm. It would be able to differentiate between your own skin temperature and the temperature of external objects.
A motion sensor is also mentioned and used to detect when you’re reaching out, which could be used to turn on the external temperature sensor when it recognizes that you’re moving to measure an object or person.
The ring could then notify you about abnormal readings via haptic or audio feedback, or send the reading to the partner Samsung app. How it would determine what an abnormal reading is would be interesting, given that the temperature of a hot drink is very different from that of a person — unless they have a terrifyingly high fever.
How could it be useful?
I’m not entirely convinced that being able to measure the temperature of a cup of coffee you’re holding is that useful — I’m already holding the cup, so I can gauge it pretty well myself. However, there are a couple of potential uses that have me excited as a parent with small children.
The first is the use case shown in the patent, where you hold the ring against someone’s forehead to check for a fever. I do this regularly with my kids, one of which is in nursery and so is constantly picking up bugs, and having the ring on my finger to give a more precise measurement than I get from my palm would be useful.
A second potential use for parents that isn’t shown in the patent is to gauge the temperature of bathwater. There are already dedicated devices for this, and I tend to rely on just sticking my hand in the water, but again having the ring there to give a precise measurement would be handy.
These uses would rely on the ring being highly accurate, especially when it comes to judging a fever in a child or adult, but you could always back up any abnormal readings from the ring by using a traditional thermometer.
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