Microphone, volume control for iPhone

Apple’s almost two decades of research into a smart Apple Ring is now continuing with more details about how such a device could spin on your finger to control your iPhone, and maybe include a microphone.

We may never know when Apple actually first started considering a smart ring, but the leaks, and the expectations, and finally the patents go back to at least 2007. Since then, it’s been reported to be dropped and back on — often by the same leaker.

Now in a pair of newly-revealed patents, Apple has again demonstrated that for a product it hasn’t released in two decades, it isn’t half trying. The first one, just called “Ring Device,” is concerned with the purpose of such a smart ring, suggesting that for a start, it “may include near-field communications circuitry for emulating near-field communications tags based on biometric data and/or for logging health-related actions such as medicine intake.”

But then an Apple Ring could also include an “inertial measurement unit [that] may detect pointing and other gestures for controlling equipment.” So pointing your finger at a door, for instance, may open it — with or without accompanying Harry Potter-style incantations.

Also, a “microphone may detect voice input and other sounds that can be used to infer the context in which the ring device is operating,” and motion data “may be used to determine a gaze direction.”

So the Apple Ring could feature Siri, and it could also duplicate the Apple Watch‘s loudness detector. Duplication of what other devices already do has long been said to be a reason for Apple not to make a smart ring, but there is also an argument that it could fit well into the Apple eco-system.

Detail from the patent showing the interior mechanism of a proposed smart ring — image credit: Apple

It’s easy to imagine, for instance, that detecting the motion of the ring — and therefore of the user’s finger — could aid with precision work in the Apple Vision Pro. Or there are health benefits where using sensors in both a ring and the Apple Watch could produce more accurate or more comprehensive results.

The second newly-granted patent is more concerned with how a user could operate the ring, beyond just talking to it. “Ring input device with variable rotational resistance,” depicts a ring that has a moving element.

So if you’re the sort to nervously fiddle with a ring, Apple’s version could stay where it is on your finger, but allow the outer rim to rotate. Apple refers to this as having a “stationary inner band,” and a “rotating outer band.”

Apple hasn’t given up on the non-rotating ring — image credit: Apple

In this patent, Apple spends more time stressing that its proposal is for any device that can rotate, and even mentions a list of them. Such a device, it says, could be worn on a “necklace, hoop earrings, electronic bracelet bands that are worn around the wrist, electronic toe rings, and the like.”

Apple also gives a reason for doing any of this. “Because finger rings are often small and routinely worn,” it says, “electronic finger rings can be employed as unobtrusive communication devices that are readily available to communicate wirelessly with other devices capable of receiving those communications.”

What Apple’s patent doesn’t do is give many examples of why a user would want such a ring, or what they would do it with it. However, it does suggest that, for instance, such a ring “can be used to provide inputs to companion wearable devices such as smart watches, health monitoring devices, headphones, ear buds and the like.”

An Apple Ring could also be used to “provide inputs to handheld devices such as smartphones (e.g., scrolling through a list using [the] rotating outer band.) There are broader claims about controlling devices in the home, such as “turning on a lamp, [or] changing a TV channel.” )

Backing up the thought that an Apple Ring would slot into the Apple ecosystem, the patent also suggests that the device can receive information from, for instance, an Apple Watch or an iPhone. For example, “the ring can receive a notification from a smartphone and generate a vibrating alert.”

Of course, the Apple Watch already does that. But if there isn’t anything obviously unique to an Apple Ring in these two patents, there is a lot that the device could be capable of.

If Apple ever releases it. These patents are now the key example of how even when Apple is granted a patent, it does not follow that we will see a product launch soon, if at all.

Curiously, the two patents share no inventors in common. The second one with the rotating outer band, though, includes Michael Beyhs, who previously worked on both the ring and the Apple Watch’s Digital Crown.

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