Hong Kong startup Origami Labs has announced it's adding new gesture features to its Orii smart ring, designed to make it easier to take control of the other tech you own.
The piece of smart jewellery has added support for series of new gestures that take advantage of the built-in motion sensors to bring the ring closer together to your smartphone, headphones and smart home kit.
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With the ring on your finger, a double tap on your wrist will read out messages from your phone, while a double tap pointing up launches Siri or Google Assistant voice assistants from your smartphone.
When you've got a pair of headphones on, a double tap pointing down can skip a music track while a double tap pointing to the left plays or pauses the music track you're currently listening to.
Last up is the smart home integration where you'll now be able to double tap pointing horizontally to turn smart lights on and off. It's also working to bring those gestures closer together with the IFTTT platform to offer richer smart home controls.
The Orii smart ring started life on Kickstarter back in 2017 successfully raising over $30,000 with weeks to spare on its campaign. Despite some smart jewellery and particularly smart rings struggling to graduate from concept into a physical working device, Origami Labs actually managed to make it happen.
Its key feature is to utilise the bone conduction tech packed into its small design to enable wearers to raise their finger to their ears to check in on messages, notifications. It'll even let you speak into the ring to send messages using the onboard microphone.
When we spoke to the startup's CEO and co-founder Kevin Johan Wong he told us about the ambition of Orii trying to solve a problem and act as a screen-free device that lets you control your smartphone without looking. It was also about making technology more accessible.
The addition of gesture controls will no doubt keep Orii owners further away from their phones if the gestures work without issue. It seems though that it was always the plan to roll out these features so hopefully they should work smoothly.
If you want in on a smart ring that wants to take you away from your screens, you can currently buy the $199 smart ring from the company's website with shipping to the US, UK and other parts of Europe already on offer.
How we test
By Michael Sawh
Michael Sawh has been covering the wearable tech industry since the very first Fitbit landed back in 2011. Previously the resident wearable tech expert at Trusted Reviews, he also marshaled the features section of T3.com.
He also regularly contributed to T3 magazine when they needed someone to talk about fitness trackers, running watches, headphones, tablets, and phones.
Michael writes for GQ, Wired, Coach Mag, Metro, MSN, BBC Focus, Stuff, TechRadar and has made several appearances on the BBC Travel Show to talk all things tech.
Michael is a lover of all things sports and fitness-tech related, clocking up over 15 marathons and has put in serious hours in the pool all in the name of testing every fitness wearable going. Expect to see him with a minimum of two wearables at any given time.