And this one is a bit different. Only a couple of weeks ago, we covered another Oura patent that uses tiny electrical currents to create haptic sensations⁠. This latest idea takes a much more mechanical approach.

The inside of the ring would actually move

The filing, US 2026/0259613 A1 , describes what Oura calls “pressure-based haptic feedback”. The basic idea is to place a flexible pad on the inside of the ring, with magnets and small coils sitting underneath it.

Send current through the coils and the magnetic field moves the magnet. That movement pushes the flexible pad towards the wearer’s finger, creating a small pressure sensation. Change the way the coils are driven and the ring could produce different strengths, durations and patterns of pressure.

So instead of feeling a normal buzz, you might feel a tap, a short press or a sequence of presses against your finger.

That makes quite a lot of sense for a smart ring. Space inside these devices is extremely limited, and a traditional vibration motor takes up room that could otherwise go towards the battery, sensors or electronics. Oura’s design effectively turns part of the inner ring structure into the haptic system.

The patent goes beyond generic notifications too. Oura describes different feedback patterns being associated with different events, including successful contactless payments, battery status and physiological information. It also discusses haptic feedback being triggered when a measured health value crosses a threshold.

The same system could check how well the ring fits

There is another interesting part buried in the filing. Oura says the magnet and coil arrangement could also work in the opposite direction.

If pressure from the finger moves the flexible pad and magnet, the coil can detect the resulting electrical change. In other words, the haptic mechanism could double as a pressure sensor rather than simply pushing against the finger.

That potentially gives Oura another way of determining how tightly the ring is sitting on the finger. The company specifically discusses using pressure measurements alongside physiological data and identifying situations where changes in fit could affect those readings.

This lines up with other Oura work aimed at detecting poor ring fit and weak skin contact⁠. That earlier approach used optical techniques. Pressure sensing would give the ring another source of information about what is happening between its inner surface and your finger.

For smart rings, that is not a small detail. Optical heart rate and blood oxygen measurements depend heavily on good contact, and fingers change size throughout the day. A ring that can tell when its fit has changed could potentially judge some readings differently, warn the user or compensate for poor contact.

Oura is known for filing a lot of patents, some of which never make it into a real-world product. So don’t take this as a guarantee you will see the haptic feature built into Oura Ring 6.

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That does not mean Oura handed customers $84.4 million or that every Ring 4 has a faulty battery. It does show that the problem became expensive enough to leave a very noticeable mark on the company’s accounts.

Ring 4 replacements pushed warranty costs higher

Oura spells it out in its newly public IPO filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission⁠. Certain Ring 4 production cohorts experienced battery performance issues, leading to more warranty claims and higher costs as affected rings were replaced free of charge.

Some replacements were even provided outside the normal warranty period. Oura generally offers a one-year limited warranty, except in places where local law requires longer coverage, so that detail suggests the company did not always draw a hard line once the first year had passed.

The filing does not identify the affected batches, sizes or purchase dates. It also does not reveal how many rings were replaced, so Ring 4 owners still have no simple way to check whether their device belongs to one of those cohorts.

Battery complaints are not new territory for the company, and we previously covered battery drain reported by owners of earlier Oura generations⁠. This disclosure is different because it comes directly from Oura and attaches a substantial financial figure to problems with the Ring 4.

Oura’s wider numbers are strong

The battery disclosure sits inside a much bigger IPO story. Oura confidentially filed to go public earlier this year⁠, but the newly released paperwork gives us the first proper look at its finances.

Revenue reached $1.21 billion during the nine months ending June 30, 2026, up 74 percent from the same period a year earlier. Net income climbed from $1.6 million to $60.8 million, while the company sold 3.1 million rings during those nine months.

Oura also had five million paid members by the end of June, twice as many as a year earlier. Membership revenue rose 121 percent to $240.5 million and carried an 89 percent gross margin, with weighted-average 12-month member retention sitting at approximately 85 percent.

Hardware still generated 80 percent of revenue, so manufacturing problems can quickly become costly even with a healthy subscription business behind them. Oura says the Ring 4 warranty increase was tied to earlier design, manufacturing and supplier factors, while testing and quality-control work has since been expanded.

What Ring 4 owners should take from this

Owners seeing a sudden drop in battery life have a stronger reason to contact Oura support, however, even if the standard warranty has recently ended. The company has now confirmed that some affected devices were replaced outside that period, although it has not promised the same treatment in every case.

The newer Oura Ring 5 launched in June⁠ with redesigned hardware, and Oura says it continues to monitor its performance. The filing also warns that current or future generations could experience other quality issues, which is standard risk language but worth noting after such a large warranty increase.

The post Oura filing reveals the scale of its Ring 4 battery problems appeared first on Gadgets & Wearables.

There are two models, Circular Ring 3 Pro and Circular Ring 3 Slim. They share quite a lot, but Circular has made a much clearer distinction between them than simply offering two sizes of the same thing.

Haptic vibrations are back

The return of vibration alerts is probably the most interesting bit here. Circular used haptics on its earlier rings, but dropped them with Ring 2, so Ring 3 brings back one of the few smart ring features that genuinely feels different from what most rivals are doing.

The ring can quietly buzz your finger for silent alarms, medication reminders and health alerts. Circular also plans to use vibrations during guided breathing exercises, which makes more sense on a screenless wearable than repeatedly asking you to check an app.  Both Ring 3 models get the feature.

NFC payments are also standard across the range. Circular says users will be able to tap their ring to pay using supported Visa and Mastercard cards, although we do not yet have a detailed list of banks, countries or card issuers that will work at launch.

Ring 3 Pro gets the full health package

Circular Ring 3 Pro is the one with most of the sensors. It has single-lead ECG, and Circular says its AFib detection is FDA-cleared. Blood pressure trend tracking also makes the cut, along with non-invasive glucose trend estimates, heart rate, HRV, SpO2, respiration, temperature, sleep, stress and activity tracking.

The hardware has changed quite a bit as well. Ring 3 Pro measures 6.8mm across and weighs roughly 3 to 4 grams depending on size. Ring 2 is 7.8mm wide, so the new model should look noticeably less substantial on the finger, although at 2.78mm it is actually slightly thicker than Ring 2’s 2.65mm profile.

Battery life gets a decent bump. Circular quotes up to 12 days for the Pro, compared with up to seven days for Ring 2. Its 700mAh charging case is rated for around five to six additional charging cycles, and a full wireless charge of the ring should take about 50 minutes. 

Ring 3 Slim cuts a few health features

Ring 3 Slim takes a different route. It drops ECG and blood pressure tracking, but keeps heart rate, HRV, SpO2, respiration, temperature, sleep, activity, stress and women’s health features. Interestingly, Circular’s comparison sheet also lists glucose trend estimates for the Slim.

It is considerably smaller than the Pro. The Slim is just 5.9mm wide, 2.35mm thick and weighs around 1.9 to 3 grams depending on size. That makes it both narrower and thinner than Circular Ring 2⁠, and probably the model to watch if comfort is higher on your list than ECG.

Circular quotes up to 10 days of battery life. Its 700mAh charging case can apparently recharge the ring around nine to ten times, while the ring itself takes roughly 30 minutes to fill up wirelessly. 

Both versions come in US sizes 6 through 14 and offer 50 metre water resistance. Circular is also rolling out an updated Kira app, which pulls the ring’s measurements together and uses AI to provide health trends and personalised recommendations.

There is one fairly important piece still missing, though. Circular has not announced pricing or a pre-order date yet, saying those details will follow in the coming months. 

So for now this is a proper hardware reveal rather than something you can go out and buy. But Ring 3 does look like a more interesting step forward than Ring 2, particularly because Circular is not simply piling on more health metrics. Payments and haptic alerts give the ring a couple of things to do during the day when you are not thinking about your sleep score.

The post IFA 2026: Circular Ring 3 series gets slimmer while adding payments and vibrations appeared first on Gadgets & Wearables.

The application, US 2026/0248448 A1, was published on August 27 under the title “Techniques for migraine detection using a wearable device.” It is a continuation of earlier work rather than a completely new project, but the newly published document gives us a detailed look at how Oura thinks migraine prediction could work.

The ring would look for changes before a migraine

The basic idea is fairly straightforward. Oura would establish what is normal for an individual, then look for changes in their physiological data that have previously been associated with migraines.

Sleep plays a big role in the patent. The system can look at total sleep time, REM sleep and other sleep stages, then compare those numbers with the person’s recent baseline. A machine learning model could identify changes such as reduced sleep duration or a drop in REM sleep that tend to occur before a migraine.

Body temperature is another important input. Oura plots both sleep and temperature across the two weeks before and after migraine symptoms appear, showing the types of changes the company believes could provide an early warning.

The system could also use heart rate, HRV, movement and other physiological information already available from the ring. This would not rely on one magic migraine sensor. Instead, Oura is describing a model that looks at several small changes together and asks whether that pattern resembles the period before one of the user’s previous migraines.

That approach is fairly close to the direction Oura has already taken with Health Radar. The current feature looks for unusual changes across several background signals, while this patent applies the same broad idea to a much more specific outcome.

Oura could warn you before symptoms start

The useful part is what happens after the ring detects that pattern. Oura describes creating a “migraine prediction metric” that represents how likely the person is to experience a migraine during an upcoming period.

It could go further and estimate when that period is likely to begin. The app could then send a warning before symptoms appear, rather than simply noticing that something changed after the migraine has already started.

Oura even includes a mock-up showing how that could look. One notification tells the user that their data suggests they may be heading towards a migraine on Thursday and recommends taking the medication they normally use before going to bed. Another notices that their sleep has fallen over several days and asks whether they are experiencing migraine symptoms.

That second part would help the system learn from the individual. Users could log migraine events and symptoms, giving the model more information about what their own pre-migraine pattern looks like rather than relying entirely on population averages.

So this is a bit different from RingConn’s feature. Its Headache Signs tool looks at your biometrics alongside local barometric pressure and tries to flag a possible headache episode as it develops, whereas Oura’s patent is specifically about predicting a migraine before symptoms start and estimating when it may arrive.

Our takeaway

This is still a patent, so there is no indication that Oura is about to add migraine prediction to the app. But unlike some more speculative wearable patents, this one describes a feature that fits with the data the ring already collects and the way Oura is increasingly using that data.

Oura has been exploring other ways of making its existing sensor data more useful rather than simply adding more measurements. A recent Oura patent looked at detecting poor ring fit, for example, with the aim of catching conditions that could weaken the quality of those measurements in the first place.

Migraine prediction would be a much bigger step. Whether Oura can make it accurate enough for real-world use is another question.

This article originally appeared on Gadgets & Wearables, the first media outlet to report the story.

The post Oura patent shows how the ring could warn you before a migraine appeared first on Gadgets & Wearables.

A newly published US patent application from the company describes a smart ring built around that idea. It was filed in February 2025 and published on August 20, 2026 as US 2026/0246054 A1.

Anyone who has owned a smart ring for a few years will understand the problem. These devices are designed for continuous wear, but their batteries are usually permanently sealed inside. Once capacity drops significantly, replacing the battery is generally not practical and the entire ring can end up needing replacement.

Ultrahuman’s answer is to make the battery itself part of a removable section of the ring.

Swap the battery without stopping the ring

The drawings show a main ring body containing the sensors and electronics, with a curved battery section that attaches to it. Ultrahuman lists several possible ways of securing the two pieces, including magnets, a sliding lock and a snap-fit mechanism.

Electrical contacts automatically connect the battery module to the rest of the ring once it is attached. The patent mentions spring-loaded pins, pogo pins and magnetic contacts as possible approaches.

But the clever part is what happens when you take that battery out.

Ultrahuman proposes putting a smaller “residual battery” inside the main ring body. When the removable battery is detached, this smaller battery temporarily powers the sensors and electronics. Once a charged module is attached, a switching mechanism moves power back to the larger battery.

In theory, you could keep a second battery module charged and swap it in within seconds. The ring would continue recording while you do it, rather than spending an hour or two sitting on a charger. That is particularly interesting for sleep and recovery tracking, where missing chunks of data can affect the following day’s scores.

Oura has been thinking along similar lines

This isn’t the first removable smart ring battery design we’ve come across.

Earlier this year, we covered an Oura patent for a smart ring with a detachable battery section. Oura’s approach also separates the battery housing from the sensor-equipped portion of the ring, allowing the power module to be removed and replaced.

The two ideas attack much the same problem, although Ultrahuman’s residual battery makes its version particularly interesting. Instead of simply making the main battery replaceable, the filing is designed around keeping the ring operational during the swap.

That could also make charging work quite differently. Rather than charging the whole ring every few days, you could potentially charge individual battery modules separately and rotate them.

Battery ageing may be the bigger benefit

Convenience is only half the story. Replaceable batteries could substantially extend the useful life of smart rings.

I found battery performance pretty solid when I tested the Ultrahuman Ring Air, with the ring typically losing around 15 to 20% charge per day. But lithium batteries inevitably degrade with repeated charging cycles, regardless of how well they perform when new.

Ultrahuman explicitly talks about this in the filing. Instead of throwing away an otherwise functional ring when its battery deteriorates, the owner could simply replace the battery module. The company also suggests different battery capacities could eventually be offered, opening the possibility of choosing between a lighter module and one designed for longer runtime.

There is even an outer shell in some of the drawings that fits over the ring and removable battery section. This could be made from silicone, metal or a combination of materials, helping disguise the modular construction and making the finished device look more like a conventional ring.

None of this means Ultrahuman is about to launch such a product. Patent filings regularly cover ideas that never make it into commercial hardware, and making a removable section durable, waterproof and comfortable enough for continuous wear would bring its own engineering headaches.

But this is now at least the second major smart ring company we’ve seen exploring replaceable batteries. That makes the broader idea more interesting than any one patent.

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That could give a future Oura ring a way to get your attention while keeping the minimalist approach that has defined the product so far. More interestingly, Oura thinks the system could create several different sensations rather than simply producing the equivalent of a buzz.

A smart ring that electrically taps your finger

The patent, titled “Electrical stimulation for haptic feedback“, places several electrodes around the inside of the ring, with circuitry generating a controlled electrical current between selected electrodes and through the wearer’s finger.

This is not supposed to work like an electric shock. Oura describes carefully controlled pulse sequences where frequency, duration, current and other parameters can be adjusted to create different sensations.

Things get more unusual when the patent discusses nerve placement. Depending on which electrodes are used, the electrical path could intersect a nerve in the finger, meaning the wearer might feel the sensation farther along the finger or even at the fingertip rather than directly underneath the ring. 

Oura also discusses “biomimetic” stimulation patterns. In plain English, that means adjusting the pulses so they feel more like familiar sensations such as pressure or touch instead of an unnatural electrical sensation.

The strength and pattern could also be personalised. The ring could run test patterns, ask for feedback and then adjust the stimulation according to what the wearer finds comfortable and noticeable. 

This solves an interesting Oura problem

The idea is particularly relevant because Oura has traditionally avoided putting a vibration motor inside its rings. That simplicity has advantages, but it also means the ring cannot currently tap your finger when an alert arrives.

That difference has become more obvious as competing smart rings add haptics. The RingConn Gen 3, for example, includes vibration alerts, while Oura Ring 5 still goes without them.

Electrical stimulation gives Oura a different route. It could potentially provide discreet notifications without adopting exactly the same hardware approach as competitors.

The patent mentions health and wellbeing notifications, battery information and device settings as examples of information that could be communicated. Different electrical patterns could represent different alerts, so the wearer might eventually learn to distinguish them without looking at a phone. 

There is also some clever adaptation built into the concept. Oura proposes determining which finger the ring is being worn on and selecting the electrode pair most likely to produce the desired sensation on that finger. 

Oura is clearly thinking beyond passive tracking

The patent fits an interesting wider direction for smart rings. These devices have traditionally collected information quietly and then handed everything over to a smartphone app, but adding haptic output would turn the ring into a two-way interface.

Oura could use that for simple notifications, but health applications are potentially more interesting. A ring that detects a physiological change could theoretically alert the wearer directly instead of waiting for them to open the app.

The filing claims priority from February 4, 2025 and was published internationally on August 13, 2026. The international search report also cites earlier work relevant to several of the claims, which is a reason not to treat the application as a finished Oura technology. 

Even so, this is one of the more interesting Oura patents we have seen recently. Instead of simply finding another health metric to calculate, Oura is looking at changing what a smart ring can actually do on your finger.

The post Oura is experimenting with electrical haptics for future smart rings appeared first on Gadgets & Wearables.

We covered Zepp Health’s lawsuit when it was filed in April. At the time, it looked like the latest escalation in an increasingly messy smart ring patent fight, but that particular case ended rather abruptly.

Zepp dropped all six patent claims

Zepp Inc. and Zepp North America filed their lawsuit against Oura on April 21 in the Eastern District of Texas. The complaint accused the Oura Ring Gen 3, Gen 4 and accompanying app of infringing six Zepp patents covering areas including motion recognition, sensor confidence, stride calibration, health scoring and sleep monitoring.

Less than three months later, Zepp changed course.

On July 10, the company filed a notice voluntarily dismissing the entire case without prejudice. That last part means Zepp technically retains the ability to bring the claims again, rather than losing them through a court ruling. There was no decision on whether Oura actually infringed any of the patents.

Bloomberg Law reported the dismissal on July 13, but at that point the wider picture was not quite as clear. We now have another filing that helps explain what was happening behind the scenes.

Oura and Zepp had reached a settlement

A newer USITC notice published on August 12 confirms that Oura and Zepp had jointly asked to remove Zepp from Oura’s separate International Trade Commission case on July 9.

More importantly, the filing explicitly says the request was based on a settlement agreement.

The timeline is pretty telling. Oura and Zepp jointly asked the ITC to terminate Zepp from that investigation on July 9. The administrative law judge approved the request on July 10. Zepp then dismissed its own six-patent lawsuit against Oura on July 10 as well. The full ITC notice lays out the sequence of events.

The terms of the settlement have not been made public, so we cannot say exactly what each company agreed to. But given the timing, it looks very likely that Zepp’s decision to withdraw its lawsuit formed part of the broader settlement between the two companies.

That makes this more interesting than Zepp simply deciding not to pursue the case.

Oura originally went after Zepp Health over the Amazfit Helio Ring. Last November, it filed a patent lawsuit against Zepp Health and followed that with an ITC action seeking potential import restrictions against Zepp and several other smart ring companies.

Zepp then fired back in April with its own six-patent lawsuit against Oura. For a while, the two companies were effectively suing each other over different parts of their respective wearable technology portfolios.

That standoff has now cooled considerably.

The ITC formally terminated Zepp from Oura’s investigation following the settlement. The Commission confirmed that decision on August 11 and published its notice the following day. That means the Amazfit maker is no longer one of the respondents facing a potential exclusion order in that particular ITC case.

The smart ring patent war is changing shape

There is a slightly bigger story here as well. Oura has spent the past few years aggressively enforcing its smart ring patents, and we have seen disputes involving RingConn, Ultrahuman, Samsung, Zepp Health and others.

Some of those fights are now ending in settlements rather than courtroom victories.

That appears to be what happened with Zepp. Neither side got a public ruling declaring its patents stronger, nor did a court decide that either the Oura Ring or Amazfit Helio Ring infringed the other’s technology. Instead, the two companies appear to have found a way to remove Zepp from the ITC fight while Zepp simultaneously withdrew its offensive lawsuit.

There are still plenty of legal battles surrounding Oura. Samsung remains involved in substantial smart ring litigation, and Oura’s patent portfolio continues to face challenges in several venues. So this is certainly not the end of the broader smart ring patent war.

The post Oura and Zepp Health appear to have settled their smart ring patent battle appeared first on Gadgets & Wearables.

This is not Oura’s first move in this area. We have previously covered its more detailed work on cuffless blood pressure monitoring, where pulse timing, calibration and software processing played a central role. This new filing approaches the problem from another direction, focusing much more closely on the physical layout of the sensors inside the ring.

A different way of reading the pulse

The patent, called “Axial photodetector array for wearable ring devices“, was filed as an international PCT application from the US and published by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) on August 13, 2026. Rather than relying on photodetectors arranged only around the inner circumference of the ring, Oura proposes placing multiple detectors across its width as well.

This creates something useful. Two photodetectors sitting a known distance apart can pick up slightly different versions of the same pulse wave, including differences in timing and signal characteristics.

Oura describes comparing those measurements to calculate additional physiological information. In the claims, the company specifically names blood pressure, pulse wave velocity, arterial stiffness and blood viscosity as possible outputs. 

The diagrams in the filing make the idea easier to understand. They show several possible layouts, with rows of photodetectors positioned between LEDs across the width of the sensing area. Some versions use four detectors, while others expand that to six. 

Effectively, Oura wants several slightly different views of the same pulse. Comparing when those signals arrive, and how they differ, could provide information that a single detector cannot.

Blood pressure is not just a throwaway reference

Patents often contain enormous lists of measurements that a device might theoretically support, so a mention of blood pressure on its own would not tell us much. This filing goes considerably further because blood pressure and other vascular measurements appear directly in the patent claims.

That also makes this filing different from the blood pressure work we covered earlier this year. That previous Oura patent concentrated heavily on pulse timing, synchronisation and calibration. This one looks more like an attempt to improve the raw signal itself by changing the optical hardware inside the ring. 

The two approaches could ultimately complement each other. Better optical measurements give the software cleaner data to work with, while the processing system then has to turn those signals into something useful.

Oura also says readings from several photodetectors could simply be averaged to improve the accuracy of ordinary physiological measurements. So even if blood pressure never becomes a consumer feature, the same arrangement could potentially improve existing PPG-based tracking. 

There is more hiding in the filing

The patent goes beyond optical sensing. Oura also describes inner and outer electrodes that could create an electrical path through the wearer when they touch the outside of the ring with a finger from the opposite hand.

That arrangement could potentially support ECG, bioimpedance and electrodermal activity measurements. Oura says bioimpedance could provide information related to muscle mass, body fat or hydration, while EDA could be used for things such as galvanic skin response and stress-related measurements. 

There is even a reference to NFC for payments, authentication and unlocking external devices. Those ideas sit further away from the core invention, though, so we would not read them as evidence that Oura is preparing an NFC ring.

Still, the direction is pretty clear. Oura is looking at ways of getting much richer vascular information from the finger, and this particular filing shows that the company is attacking the problem at the sensor level rather than relying entirely on software.

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One of the first owners to post detailed impressions said setup was straightforward and that they were quickly using Index 01 to create shopping lists and reminders. More impressively, voice recognition apparently worked well in a noisy train station, which is a useful real-world test for a device built almost entirely around spoken input.

That lines up with what Pebble has claimed from the start. Index 01 is designed to be held close to the mouth, allowing the microphone to focus on nearby speech rather than the wider environment.

The core idea seems to work

Other early reports are positive too. One Android owner said the hardware and software worked smoothly, with commands interpreted quickly and accurately. They had already connected Index 01 to their own server through webhooks and started experimenting with custom actions.

An iPhone user also managed to create reminders through Apple Reminders and Google Tasks once Bluetooth permissions were enabled for the Pebble app.

That flexibility was one of the more interesting parts when Pebble first announced Index 01. The hardware is deliberately simple. Most of the useful stuff happens through the app, where recordings can become notes, reminders and other actions.

There are already a few rough edges, though. One owner found Android music controls noticeably slow, with around four seconds between a double tap and the requested action.

Software is the weak point for now

Several Android users have run into more serious problems. In the growing thread of early owner experiences, some managed to pair the ring but found that recordings were not appearing in the Index feed. One owner fixed an initial pairing issue with a factory reset, only to find that recordings still would not transfer.

Another user reported that onboarding never appeared properly after pairing. That is more annoying on Index 01 than it would be on most wearables because the battery cannot be recharged. Troubleshooting is not going to destroy the battery overnight, but every test still uses part of a finite resource.

Pebble has already warned buyers to expect early software bugs, so none of this is especially surprising. The first production units are effectively showing where the weak spots are.

Sizing may also be inconsistent. One early owner found the production ring much tighter than expected and was glad they had moved up a size. But another owner reported the opposite, saying their production ring felt slightly larger than the sizing model they had used.

That makes it hard to say Index 01 simply runs small. Pebble has advised buyers to size up when uncertain, and these first deliveries suggest that advice is worth taking seriously.

It is still far too early for a verdict. Only a small number of production units are in the wild, and people with problems are naturally more likely to post about them.

Still, the first owner reports answer one useful question. Index 01 does not appear to fall apart once it leaves the demo environment. Voice capture can work well, the integrations look genuinely useful and the open approach gives the ring plenty of room to grow.

For now, the hardware concept looks more convincing than the software supporting it.

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US patent application 2026/0219706 A1 was published on July 30. This does not confirm that an Amazfit Helio Ring 2 is around the corner, but it gives us a useful look at the ideas Huami has explored for its smart ring platform.

The patent claims priority from an earlier Chinese filing made in October 2023. That means the underlying work began before the first Helio Ring reached the market, and several parts of the design overlap with the current model.

Those include optical heart rate and blood oxygen tracking, skin temperature measurement and electrodermal activity. In our Amazfit Helio Ring review, I found the first-generation device particularly strong during exercise, an area where many smart rings still struggle.

The more interesting parts of the patent describe features that the current ring does not offer. This includes body composition measurements and ECG recording.

One pair of electrodes could do several jobs

The proposed ring has two large, curved electrodes running around most of its inner surface. Together, they can cover more than two-thirds of the ring’s internal circumference, giving them a larger contact area with the finger.

Huami says these electrodes could collect electrodermal activity, body impedance, ECG and temperature signals. They could also act as charging contacts when the ring is placed inside its case.

Using the same electrodes for several functions would reduce the need for separate contacts and free up space inside the ring. The patent describes switching circuitry that changes how the electrodes connect depending on whether the ring is collecting health data or charging.

The drawings also show a curved battery and circuit board occupying separate sections around the ring. Huami says this arrangement can use the available space more efficiently and reduce the thickness of the device.

A charging case would be another useful change. The original Helio Ring uses a small dock, which worked reliably during our testing but could be fiddly when aligning the ring.

Body composition looks like the strongest upgrade

Body composition is one of the potential new features. The patent describes using bioelectrical impedance analysis to estimate measurements such as body fat.

A basic version could use the two electrodes inside the ring. A more advanced setup could add conductive areas to the outside, allowing the wearer to touch the ring with another finger and create a longer electrical path through the body.

Huami also describes combining the ring with another wearable. One example uses an electrode on a smartwatch as an additional contact point, allowing the watch and ring to perform a multi-electrode body composition measurement together.

ECG and improved optical tracking are also possible

The electrodes could also capture ECG signals. The patent does not describe a finished ECG feature or explain how the wearer would complete a reading, but an outer contact could let someone touch the ring with their opposite hand in much the same way as a smartwatch ECG.

Huami also explores more elaborate optical sensor layouts. These can include multiple light emitters and detectors, convex lenses and several optical paths with different distances between components.

Using several paths could help the ring find a cleaner signal when its position changes or when the fit is less than perfect. It could improve heart rate, blood oxygen and movement performance without relying solely on tighter contact with the finger.

The patent briefly mentions blood pressure and glucose among the measurements an optical sensor might support. However, it provides no detailed method for either feature, so those references are too broad to treat as evidence of a glucose or blood pressure ring.

There is no guarantee that all this will appear in a second-generation Helio Ring. Still, the document shows where Huami sees room to expand. A future model could be slimmer, easier to charge and capable of body composition or ECG.

That would give the Helio line a clearer identity in an increasingly crowded category. The first model already holds its own among the best smart rings available today, but these extra features might make the next version stand out more.

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