Hong Kong start-up Origami Labs’ Orii Smart Ring lets you make calls, send messages, post to social media, and interact with your voice assistant without your phone. The key is bone conduction technology, which transmits sound privately by sending vibrations directly to your ear. You wear the ring on your index finger, and when it vibrates with an incoming call, simply lift your hand up, touch your fingertip to a spot just before your ear, then chat away. Housed inside the splash proof ring are a dual Bluetooth 4.0 radio with Bluetooth Low Energy support, dual-mic noise cancellation, a gyroscope, an LED (for customizable notifications in the app), a 50 mAh battery and a bone conduction actuator. The battery provides about 1.5 hours of continuous listening time and at least 40 hours of standby time. Orii supports both iPhone’s Siri and Android’s Google Assistant to give users hands-free control. Orig Labs’ CEO, Kevin Wong, whose father is a visually impaired software engineer originally set out to develop a device could help his father, and others b get more from their phone.
Like many crowdfunded projects, Orii has fallen behind its initial early-2018 production schedule, but it’s in the process of shipping units to Kickstarter backers first, with Indiegogo backers expected to follow in November. Once backer orders have been fulfilled, Orii is expected to be available for $159.
There’s plenty of room to speculate on the long-term prospects for Orii and other finger-based wearables: They’re certainly novel, but personal preference will determine whether you’re better off housing these components in a ring or a similarly priced Bluetooth earpiece. Several companies, including Apple, have considered using ring-based wearables as Apple Watch alternatives, or to control smart TVs and other devices, but relatively few “smart rings” have actually hit the market — most notably simple NFC bands.
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