Welcome to 2015. This is the 10 year anniversary of IHeartSwitch.com and it is befitting to start with a post about wireless connected rings. The connected ring was the first thing I ever concepted back at Parsons, but it was just a dream and a hacked together RF radio design.
Now, in 2015, we have Ringly, a line of metal and stone rings that are elegant fashion jewelry, and much more. The Bluetooth connected rings vibrate and light up to notifications from your mobile phone.
I got my ring before Christmas as a present to myself. When it arrived, the experience was like getting a gift. The product was wrapped nicely and I had to unfold the paper and open it up. Then, I pulled out a black jewelry box to see my little Ringly looking back at me. I purchased the Emerald and Gold one with a little diamond on the side.
The jewelry box that holds the ring is actually its charger, so you don’t have to figure out how to charge a tiny ring. You plug it into USB and there are two discrete metal prongs that connect the ring to the charger. It looks like a normal jewelry box. I especially adored the hand signed letter from the CEO, Christina Mercado and the gold plated metal on the USB charger. Nice touches.
After turning it on, I downloaded the app (both on Android and IOS) and it had a start page that allowed me to connect to the ring through Bluetooth. It’s bright and cheery and you pick your color and number of vibrations and set them to your notifications. It can set to vibrate to your Phone, Email, Text, Twitter, Facebook and even Uber.
To give a review, it’s exactly what it appears to be, a connected ring that sends discrete notifications. Right now the app sends a little vibrate for any email or Tweet. For most of us, that’s a lot of vibrations. My wants for the next generation rings are personalized notification features so you can have settings for specific people and a few more styles to choose from.
As a new form of communication, Ringly is about having fun and figuring out what works best. It’s fun to play with the settings and has a nice out of the box feel. Overall this product is very nicely done.
Go get one for yourself! Pre-order one here: https://ringly.com/