Oura preempts Samsung's Galaxy Ring with new features for its rings
Samsung is launching the Galaxy Ring this year, most likely in July, and that will shake up the smart ring market, thus far dominated by Oura. So Oura seems to be preparing for the huge competition it will face from the Korean behemoth.
Today it's launched a new Labs section in its app, where it plans to test new features and get user feedback - perhaps it wants to differentiate itself from Samsung based on these.
The Labs section is currently only rolling out for iOS, and the first new Labs feature is Symptom Radar, which tracks strain markers on your body to detect an onset of degrading health. It monitors significant changes in body temperature range, respiratory rate, resting heart rate, and heart rate variability to reach its conclusions.
If it detects something, it will throw a notification under Readiness Score about variations in your symptoms, so you can rest if it thinks you need that. If you enable this feature, you will not get notifications from rest mode anymore, as those are more generic while the new Symptom Radar prompts are more detailed and more focused.
Shyamal Patel, Oura's Head of Science, told TechCrunch:
Oura Labs is our approach to recreate internal engagement for new features with users in a structured and formal way. With this feature, you will have a dedicated space in the app where you can go and start engaging with these new concepts we are building. Users will get to see a lot of early-stage ideas in Oura Labs.
You can also provide feedback about any Oura Labs feature as well as general feedback about Oura products through Oura Labs.