Samsung Galaxy Ring has a great, hidden smart home trick

Apple might have grabbed the spotlight with both hands thanks to its launch event for the iPhone 16 range and Apple Watch Series 10 yesterday, but that doesn't mean other tech giants haven't been working on interesting new projects too. 

Samsung, for example, was at IFA last week to show off some interesting new features coming to the Galaxy Ring, now that its long-awaited wearable is out and on people's fingers at last. 

The focus was on smart homes, and the manufacturer had a demo rigged up to show how its smart ring could become a powerful tool to set up automatic routines. This might mean, for example, setting up your morning routine to trigger once the Samsung Galaxy Ring detects that you're fully awake.

You could easily mirror that with night-time routines that set alarms live once it detects you're asleep, or any number of other options depending on what other connected devices you have hooked up in your home. 

Whether you think that this sounds like a dreamy bit of efficiency or a little creepy likely depends on how invested you already are in smart home tech. Either way, there's no doubt that being able to hook triggers into a smart ring makes sense, given that it's designed to always be on your finger, unlike a phone that you might have to leave charging, or a smartwatch that similarly requires frequent top-ups.

However, the lack of a direct interface on the Galaxy Ring means that you'd probably end up needing a backup for fine control anyway, so we don't imagine anyone will be abandoning their phone or smart speaker entirely once these new tools go live. 

On that front, Samsung didn't give a concrete timeline for when people can expect the Galaxy Ring to get the new features, but we'd imagine they might not be too far out, given the solid state of the demo being given at the conference,