There have been plenty of small pushes in the crowd-funding world that have lead to big industry titans following suite, the Android Ouya gaming console has made companies like Amazon and Google look into making their own and Pebble smartwatch kicked off the smartwatch trend we are seeing.
Smarty Ring wants to slim down the smartwatch concept from a wrist to a finger and is looking to IndieGogo to grab the necessary funding. The project is not on Kickstarter, more well known for big crowd-funded projects that reach insane amounts and vastly surpass the opening funding goal.
The design of Smarty Ring may be different to a smartwatch, but the functionality is almost the same, save the user interface. Smarty Ring displays various types of information on the two small LED displays, using Bluetooth to connect to the users smartphone.
The Smarty Ring will work with iOS and Android, but there is no news on BlackBerry or Windows Phone support. The smart ring is likely to work differently depending on the operating system, since iOS and Android have different first and third party application restrictions.
Smarty Ring has already exceeded the original funding goal with hours to spare and it racking in the cash from people wondering if this concept is the future of glance-able information, although the information is mostly small icons lighting up to show incoming notifications.
The Smarty Ring is available through the campaign for $175 and when released buyers will have to pay $275 to grab the smart ring. It is estimated the delivery time will be around April 2014, although most large-scale crowd-funded campaigns hit delays somewhere down the road.
Overall the Smarty Ring seems like a clever concept and unlike Samsung’s Galaxy Gear, it actually has something different and new to show. The only problem is we do not know if the concept will be as good as it looks – more often than not crowd-funded campaigns fall short.