Apple is also interested in connected rings

Apple is also interested in connected rings

A few days after Amazon and its Echo Loop, it is the manufacturer of the iPhone and the Apple Watch who plans to launch a smart ring. The patents filed between 2015 and 2018 have just been validated in the United States.

While Samsung and Huawei are focusing on foldable screen smartphones, Google and Amazon are downloading from connected speakers or Microsoft will release a digital notebook, Apple could be tempted by another gadget: the ring. This is what suggests the patents filed by the brand, unveiled by Venture Beat, and especially validated on October 15, 2019 by the USPTO.

The document refers to patents for "devices, methods and user interfaces for a wearable electronic ring". Further, it can be read that the user "controls an external electronic device with a touch screen mounted on a ring comprising a processor, a wireless transceiver and a rechargeable power source".

Image by tung256 from Pixabay 

Rechargeable wireless

In fact, it is simply the version, perhaps definitive, of the iRing, nickname given to the first ring designs filed by Apple in ... 2013. It is similar to the Echo Loop, unveiled by Amazon, and this ring would be equipped with a microphone, a touch-sensitive surface and maybe a gyroscope.

The documents evoke a device linked to other connected devices, and we obviously think of a smartphone. It would be possible to control his smartphone, either with gestures or by voice. The touch surface could also allow to increase or decrease the sound, but also to write an SMS, letter by letter, or to turn the pages of an e-book on a tablet. The recharge could be wireless, the sketches evoke various ways to do it. Apple may be waiting to see the interest in Amazon's ring to really get into the design.