Samsung explores a smart ring that recognises your fingerprint

Samsung is looking at a way to put a fingerprint scanner inside a smart ring. The idea is that simply sliding the ring onto your finger could be enough to identify you, letting you unlock your phone or approve payments without doing anything else.

How it would work

A US patent application published on October 15 shows how it could work. Instead of having to press your finger against a scanner, the ring would read your fingerprint as you put it on. So, in theory, something you’d be doing anyway could also double as a security check.

When you first set it up, the ring would take several scans and piece them together to get a complete picture of your fingerprint. After that, it wouldn’t need to do quite as much work. A single scan could be enough to check that it’s you wearing the ring.

Samsung has also thought about how to make this comfortable. The patent mentions tiny magnets and springs that would let the button move slightly as your finger passes over it. That way, the scanner can stay in contact with your skin without digging into your finger.

And because battery life is always a concern with something this small, the scanner wouldn’t need to stay switched on all the time. The button could wake it up when you put the ring on, so it’s only using power when needed.

There’s one other neat trick. The same button could tell when you’ve taken the ring off. Once your finger is no longer pressing against it, the button moves back into place, and the ring can let your phone or another connected device know it’s been removed.

A smart ring that could replace your fingerprint login

So what would you actually be able to do with a fingerprint-scanning ring? Samsung mentions a few possibilities, including unlocking your phone, logging into accounts and approving payments. Basically, the ring could become another way of proving that you are who you say you are.

For example, you could put the ring on in the morning, have it recognise your fingerprint and then use it to unlock your phone throughout the day. That would give smart rings a useful job beyond counting steps and tracking sleep.

There is one obvious catch, though. If the scanner only reads your fingerprint when you slide the ring on, would you have to take it off and put it back on every time you wanted to unlock something? That would get annoying pretty quickly, especially when your phone already has a fingerprint scanner.

Samsung may have a way around that. Because the ring can also tell when you’ve taken it off, it could potentially keep you authenticated for as long as you’re wearing it. Once you remove the ring, that trusted status could disappear.

Of course, getting all of this to work in a real product is another matter. There’s already very little room inside a smart ring, and Samsung would have to squeeze in the scanner and moving parts without making the ring uncomfortable.

As for whether we’ll actually see this in the Galaxy Ring 2, that’s anyone’s guess. Samsung hasn’t confirmed anything, and plenty of patented ideas never make it into products you can buy.

We do know that another Galaxy Ring is on the way. Earlier this year, Samsung’s head of digital health, Dr Hon Pak, confirmed that a successor is in development, although it may not arrive until 2027.