Meet Ringly, Where Wearble Tech Meets High-Fashion Bling Ringly connects to your iOS or Android phone and can send alerts to you for everything from meetings to Uber.
By Emily Price
Opinions expressed by BIZ Experiences contributors are their own.
Smartwatches can be great for getting you alerts from your phone on the sly. If you're a woman, however, the popular ones don't exactly scream high fashion or likely blend in with your typical wardrobe. Now, thanks to one fashionable startup, you don't have to strap a screen to your wrist to get undercover updates from your iPhone.
Meet Ringly, a smart ring that can discretely let you know you need to head out to your next meeting or that your client is calling, all while looking like a normal, attractive piece of jewelry.
The idea for the ring came to co-founder Christina Mercando after she kept missing calls from her family because she had her phone tucked away in her purse. "One day I was just looking down at my jewelry, and thought, "Hmmm I wonder if I can put something in my ring that would solve this problem?" she says. Mercado started sketching prototypes and Ringly was born.
Related: What Is Keeping Wearable Tech From Being Fashionable?
The 18k gold-plated smart jewelry comes with a semi-precious stone (black onyx, rainbow moonstone, pink sapphire or emerald), and blends in to whatever other jewelry you might be wearing. When you receive a notification, Ringly vibrates and a small light on the side of the ring momentarily shines to let you know what type of alert you're receiving. It's a subtle notification that you'll be able to understand, but the clients in your meeting won't even notice.
The type of notifications you get on the ring depends a lot on the wearer. Ringly supports five colors and four vibration patterns that can be customized within the ring's accompanying app to fit your specific needs. For instance, you might set it up to send one short vibration and a blue light when you're mentioned on Facebook, but four vibrations and a red light when your business partner is calling.
Out of the box, the ring supports text, call, email and calendar alerts from your iOS or Android phone as well as notifications from several different apps, including Instagram, Vine, LinkedIn, Tinder and Pinterest. You can even set an alert for Uber where Ringly lets you know when your car's arrived. The ring can last between two and three days on a single charge (depending on how popular are) and charges when it's placed its box.
Ringly will officially go on sale this Fall. If you can't wait to get your hands on it (literally), the company is accepting pre-orders for its first production run starting today, at $145 each.
Related: Google Glass Gets a High-Fashion Makeover, Still Looks Geeky
