Smarty Ring smartring challenges Pebble and other smartwatches

While big companies like Samsung and Qualcomm are trying to tackle the smartwatch market, a new company is looking into making a smaller piece of smart jewelry: a smartring.

Smarty Ring is a new device that’s currently in the final hours of its Indiegogo campaign, having far exceeded its funding goal. The Smarty Ring, as the name suggests, is a ring that is said to perform many of the same functions as many of the smartwatches currently on the market. It does so with a more stylish and less obtrusive design that fits on your finger instead of your wrist.

According to the Indiegogo campaign, the Smarty Watch has a small LED display that can show the time as well as notifications from your Android smartphone (it also works with iOS). It will let users see what’s waiting for them on their phone without taking their phone from their pocket. The smartring can display time in up to two time zones, act as a stopwatch or timer, and serve as a tracker to alert users when they’re out of range of their smartphone.

The Smarty Ring will have what looks like three buttons that are flush with the design that let users interact with their smartphone. The buttons will let users answer or reject phone calls, make calls to preset numbers, trigger the camera app, change profiles, and control music.

The Smarty Ring will connect to devices via Bluetooth 4.0, and can allegedly last for 24 hours on a 22 mAh battery. The smartring comes with a wireless charging station, and is waterproof.

The fully-featured Smarty Ring will sell for $275, but is available through the crowd funding campaign for $175. There are less fully-featured versions that sell for less, however.

The estimated delivery for all Smarty Rings is April 2014, which is just a few months away. The creators claim they have everything all set for release, but don’t have a prototype device to show off. Every image of the device is a render, and even the video is just a collection of concept images with Ken Burns effects. It’s a great concept, but it’d be nice to see some proof that it works first.

Very successful crowdfunding projects such as the Pebble have a history of long delays as the creators try to cope with the high demand. It’s easy to imagine a similar situation with the Smarty Ring. Maybe those who put the money down will be laughing when the rest of us want one and have to pay more. Or maybe the project is a bit too ambitious to pull off successfully. With no prototype available for review, it’s hard to say.

Are you willing to pay for a Smarty Ring, or are you sceptical of its lofty promises?