Would you buy the Galaxy Ring if it required a subscription?
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Subscriptions in the wearable space aren’t new, and Samsung wouldn’t be the first to tie its hardware or features to a subscription. The Whoop 4.0 strap offers the strangest example of this, as you’re essentially paying for the membership to get a “free” wearable. This idea still rather boggles my mind. However, the current smart ring leader, the Oura Ring 3, demands a more severe pledge. Users must pay a $5.99 monthly fee to unlock all the Ring 3’s features, with only a handful of basic metrics available without it.
While Samsung might not need the steady cash income as much as Oura, it could look over at its competitor and get a few bad ideas.
In reality, it wouldn’t make sense for Samsung to copy Oura, and I don’t believe it would resort to such a drastic paywall, either. Even though Samsung is an experienced wearable maker, the Galaxy Ring will be its first smart ring. As a new device in the market, rendering most of its features inaccessible would kill the product and any goodwill Samsung is trying to build in the smart ring space. That said, I’d never rule out business motivations, especially when dollar signs and shareholders are involved.
Kris Carlon / Android Authority
Samsung isn’t averse to walling off features, either. The company reserves its Watch’s blood pressure monitoring and ECG readings for Galaxy phone users, even if the necessary hardware is built into the watch, not the phone.
Samsung has failed to confirm that Galaxy AI will be available for free beyond 2025 — the potential for a paywall is already there.
Not all subscriptions are made equal
Of course, I’m not saying that all subscriptions should be shunned. In some instances, they do add value to smartwatch users. Withings Plus is a great example of this; it uses the data gathered by the ScanWatch and other models to provide users with more tangible, actionable insights. I’d argue that Fitbit Premium and Apple Fitness Plus are two other health subscriptions that aren’t necessary but add plenty of value to Pixel Watch and Apple Watch users who are happy to pay.
For those willing to pay for tailor-made wellness insights, a subscription to Galaxy AI-powered smarts could introduce this one thing that Samsung Health is currently missing. I’d welcome this sensible use of machine learning.
A subscription could allow Samsung to add the one feature its Health app is currently missing: personal insights.
Should you really fear a paywalled wearable future?
Perhaps “fear” is too provocative of a word. Dread might be more apt. With the inevitable march towards a future with machine learning at the center of it, it seems more than likely that subscriptions will wall off features to those unwilling to pay.
Either way, a Samsung Health subscription service is a double-edged sword. If incorrectly implemented, it could scare users away from the company’s solid wearable ecosystem, which it has rebuilt in the past few years. Conversely, it could bolster an already capable health and wellness tracking suite.
Either way, a subscription service shouldn’t act as an artificial limit to a smartwatch’s hardware, and I hope Samsung feels the same way.
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