Built-in motion sensors are enabling smart ring Orii to become even more user-friendly.
The ring, designed and manufactured by Hong Kong startup Origami Labs, has been upgraded to include a spate of new gesture features designed to allow users to step away from their phone screens more.
Wareable reports that with the ring on your finger, a double tap on your wrist will read messages from your phone out loud, while a double tap pointing up launches Siri or Google Assistant from your smartphone.
And when you’re sporting a pair of headphones, a double tap pointing down will forward a music track, and a double tap pointing to the left plays or pauses the track you’re currently listening to. The ring can also be integrated into smart-home systems—it can be programmed to turn smart lights on and off!
The Orii is one of the few smart rings to actually take off. It raised $30,000 on Kickstarter in 2017, easily exceeding its goals. As of today, the company’s Kickstarter campaign includes 2,082 backers who pledged a total of $333,619.
Wareable reports that its key feature “is to utilize the bone conduction tech packed into its small design to enable wearers to raise their finger to their ears to check in on messages, notifications.” Bone conduction technology allows you to hear sound through the vibration of your bones—in headphones, that means sound bypasses the outer and middle ear. In the Orii, we presume that means feeling the vibration and/or sound of the device in your finger bones.
The Orii without the new gesture controls—which will still cut down on your screen time—is available now for $199. Reports indicated that the gesture-enabled Orii is expected to debut in the next few months, though the company has not yet confirmed a release date.
Top: Orii smart ring (all photos courtesy of Origami Labs)
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