What do you need to know
- Samsung’s new Galaxy Ring has sold out just days after pre-orders opened for the device.
- The smart ring was back up for pre-order late last week, but some sizes will result in a long wait for delivery. Some third-party sellers do not provide a delivery estimate at all.
- Although expensive at $400, the Galaxy Ring is clearly in high demand and shows that smart rings are more than a gimmick.
Samsung has been teasing the Galaxy Ring for a while after introducing it at the year’s first Unpacked and showing it in more detail at Mobile World Congress. However, it was far from certain that the smart ring would be a success. There have been rumors of an expensive pricing model that could have high initial costs and subscription. Additionally, Samsung went up against brands like Oura and others that have much more experience in this space.
It seems that even Samsung might have doubted how big a hit the Galaxy Ring would be. The smart ring sold out just a few days after opening pre-orders and well before the ring’s official release date. Third-party sellers have continued to take pre-orders for the Galaxy Ring, but have made no official estimate of when they might ship.
Late last week, the Galaxy Ring became available again, albeit with long delivery times. 9to5Google first spotted the restock, noting that some sizes are still hard to come by, even after Samsung started accepting pre-orders for the Galaxy Ring again. In fact, some size and color combinations are still completely sold out.
The Galaxy Ring’s official release date is July 24, but buyers who pre-order now will have to wait significantly longer. Some unusual sizes and colors are available earlier than the more popular ones. You can get the Galaxy Ring in size six and titanium silver on July 26th, just a few days after the release date. However, sizes 10 and 12 come with delivery dates of August 7th, and the size 11 ring will not arrive until August 21st.
If you need a size 13 ring, you are out of luck. Shipping is “unavailable” for the Galaxy Ring in this size – for any color variant – and you can’t pre-order at all.
We don’t know how many smart rings Samsung made in its initial production run, so it’s hard to call the Galaxy Ring a huge success so early. Clearly, demand is outstripping supply, and that tells us one of two things. The company either played it safe, testing the waters before placing large-scale production orders. Or he completely underestimated the demand for the Galaxy Ring and was surprised by the sheer volume of pre-orders.
Regardless of which possible scenario is actually true, it’s still impressive that the Galaxy Ring sold out so early. You have to consider that the initial wave of pre-orders came before most of the early Galaxy Ring reviews were live. This means that first-time buyers were mostly going off Samsung’s claims and media first impressions, and quite a few people were buying based on that alone.
Why is the Galaxy Ring so popular?
I ended up pre-ordering the Galaxy Ring even though I bought mine after it was sold out, so I don’t have a delivery date at all at the moment. As a first-time buyer, I think there are two main reasons why the Galaxy Ring is so popular even though it hasn’t been officially released yet. The first is that smart rings are the real deal. It’s easy to tell they’re a gimmick because they have basic sensors and no interface on the device. But that is far from the case.
The advantage of a smart ring is that you can wear it all the time. With smart watches, you have to have them charged and they are bulky. I can’t wear a smartwatch to bed – it’s just too clunky and uncomfortable – and as a result I lose sleep tracking information. Even a thin tracker like the Whoop 4.0 is too distracting. This is where a smart ring comes in. You can wear it in the shower, during everyday life and to bed. Thanks to the long battery life and fast charging, you can wear the smart ring almost every hour of every day.
The second reason the Galaxy Ring is a hit is that it’s the first smart ring to integrate deeply into the smartphone ecosystem. It’s true that devices like Oura Ring work on both iOS and Android, but they don’t have deeper integration, and people want that deep integration. There’s a reason Apple users buy the Apple Watch, Pixel users buy the Pixel Watch, and Galaxy users buy the Galaxy Watch. It just makes for a better experience.
Samsung is quietly building an impressive health ecosystem with the Galaxy Ring and Galaxy Watch at the forefront. It appeals to me, and it obviously appeals to many others. We shouldn’t discount how impressive it is that the Galaxy Ring sold out during the pre-order phase, and we certainly shouldn’t discredit smart rings in general.