Smart rings are an interesting concept that has since been overshadowed by smartwatches and other wearables. However, you probably shouldn’t count smart rings out just yet, especially if you own an iPhone. 

Smart rings have a lot of features worth considering, including health and fitness. Apple’s focus on health and fitness is not only convenient but also compatible. Smart rings also include digital payment capabilities, online security, and perhaps digital wallets in their own right. 

There’s no telling what the future holds but it’s not hard to see a smart ring also serving as a cold storage wallet for your crypto as it already is an effective form of payment where the technology is accepted.

So are iPhones good devices to utilize the functionality of smart rings?

Do Smart Rings Work With iPhone?

Not only do smart rings work with iPhones, but there are also several of them out there that work very well with Apple products, whether it’s an iPad, Macbook, or an iPhone. So long as the app is available on the App Store, the physical ring is good to go with an iPhone. 

While smart rings lack the full range and functionality of an Apple Watch, there are still many good reasons to own one and pair it with your Apple iPhone. Apple is a funny beast, however, and it’s often that you will run into features that a device offers that you can’t get the full benefit from while using your iPhone.

While there are some excellent uses for a smart ring paired with an iPhone, you will probably miss out on a few things that might otherwise work on an Android. That is, of course, until Apple drops its own smart ring, which they probably will if they become popular enough.

Like a smartwatch, smart rings cover a lot of the basics, such as notification alerts, social media alerts, vibration, and the creation of shortcuts within the iPhone’s ecosphere.

One massive benefit of smart rings over bulkier trackers and smartwatches is that they are much more comfortable to sleep with. So if you want to track your sleep without a block strapped to your wrist, a smart ring might be the way to go.

There is a lot to like here and perhaps, smart rings may make a huge run in the near future.

What Can You Do On iPhone With A Smart Ring?

With smart rings on the iPhone, you can make contactless payments and even use it as a contactless travel pass. You can make/reject calls, send SOS messages and talk to your smart assistant. You can track steps, sleep, body temperature, heart rate, blood oxygen levels, ECG, respiration, and blood pressure. With the ArcX you can even control music playback on your iPhone.

However, Apple can be pretty stingy when it comes to its own things versus software and hardware that comes from another party. The result is that there may be some things you can’t do on your smart ring, in terms of interactions with your iPhone. 

The real stuff, however, comes with the app that you download. So, most of your interactions on an iPhone are going to be between the smart ring and its connection to the smart ring’s app. 

It starts with your basic smart rings. These are the cheapest smart rings that you will find out there, such as the McLear Ring, which is simple in design and allows you to make payments through any NFC device associated with the McLear app. 

That’s all the McLear Ring does—make payments. Pretty simple. There are a lot of smart rings out there like that. They are cheap, convenient, and make quick payments a breeze but they don’t do much else. However, it will work on an iPhone so long as you have the associated app. 

There are several other smart rings on the market that are essentially like the McLear ring and they do the same thing. 

Fortunately, that’s not the end of what smart rings can do. Otherwise, no one would buy one because there are already a lot of different ways to make rapid payments using NFC technology, mostly through your smartphone or through a smartwatch wearable. 

The above three rings, along with their associated apps, work well on iOS devices, specifically iPhones. They all offer a large set of features, most of which are associated with health, fitness, and security. 

  • Track heart rate, blood/oxygen levels, body temperature
  • Track sleep patterns
  • Track steps taken
  • ECGs
  • Blood pressure
  • The ORII has a smart assistant

Most of them come with pretty extensive battery life as well, with the glaring exception of the ORII, which only has an absurdly ridiculous 1-hour of battery life yet sells for $129.

Some of these smart ring manufacturers will have to step it up if they want to shoulder their way into the realm of smart wearables.

Which Smart Rings Work Best With iOS?

None of the smart rings on the market today stand apart from the others in terms of working better with iOS devices or just iPhones. It’s all about how well their apps work within Apple’s software. 

Of all of them, the Oura Smart Ring 3 probably gives you the most bang for your buck in the Apple ecosystem and its app comes very highly rated on the App Store. The Oura Smart Ring 3 tracks a ton of health information and it features a robust, easy to navigate, and useful app. 

It features 4 to 7 days of battery life before you can wirelessly recharge it. It tracks everything on our above list as far as your health and fitness are concerned and feeds it all onto an easy-to-read breakdown inside the app. 

On top of its own app, it also integrates with other apps, such as Strava, to bring you even more information and data gathering or tracking capabilities. The only true downside to Oura is that it’s difficult to reconcile this small ring with a $299 price tag. 

That’s not including the fact that you will have to pay for a monthly subscription of $5.99 as well. Without the subscription, it’s essentially a basic ring that needs to be charged every now and then. 

The Prevention Circul+ is also a good option for Apple iPhone users and it has many of the same features that the Oura Smart Ring 3 comes with. It’s also the same price at $299. The difference is, that the Circul+ will also give you an ECG read-out, which is a feature that the Oura lacks. 

An ECG is an electrocardiogram that records electrical signals relayed from the heart. This is one way that doctors determine if there are rhythm issues with your heartbeat. This is an excellent tool to have if you are older or have a family history of heart disease.

Related Article: Is It Bad To Charge An Apple Watch Every Night? (Explained)

How To Connect Your Smart Ring To Your iPhone?

Smart Rings use NFC technology and that’s also how they connect, not like you would expect to connect a device through Bluetooth. There is no setting for turning NFC on or off in your iPhone. That’s because NFC is automated according to the apps which need it. 

That means, when you download your smart ring app, the app itself will facilitate the connection between the smart ring and your iPhone by activating the iPhone’s buried NFC capability on its own. 

It’s all automated and you don’t have to do much of anything outside of downloading the app and using it with your ring on. The app is the connection point between the smart ring and the Apple iPhone and will serve as the connection device between the two every time you open the app. The following iPhones are NFC capable:

  • All iPhone 13 models
  • All iPhone 12 models
  • All iPhone 11 models including the iPhone SE 2nd Generation model
  • iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max
  • iPhone XR
  • iPhone X
  • iPhone 8 and 8 Plus
  • iPhone 7 and 7 Plus
  • All iPhone 6 models including the iPhone SE

Since all of these iPhones, all the way back to the iPhone SE and 6 lineups, feature NFC capability, most of the smart ring apps out there will support all of these iPhone models. No matter how old the model, you will be able to download the app and connect the ring to the iPhone through the app.

Does Apple Have Its Own Smart Ring?

As of right now, Apple does not have its own smart ring. It remains to be seen how the smart ring arena sorts itself out. Right now, smartwatches and smart bracelets rule the roost and therefore, that’s where the Apple and Samsungs of the world are focused. 

If at some point, smart rings really take off, there is a pretty high probability that Apple will jump in the arena. One thing that makes Apple products so good is that Apple doesn’t just see new technology and instantly integrate with it. 

Apple will usually wait, perfect the technology, and institute it in a future line of Apple products. A primary example of that would be 5G. Apple was late to the party but arguably instituted it better in its next line of iPhones. 

The jury is still out on smart rings. If Samsung and Google were to suddenly embrace them, you could expect Apple to wait a year or two before following up with their own version.

All Things Considered

Most smart rings out there will work just fine with an Apple iPhone, so long as you can download the app on the Apple App Store. If the app is available, that means you will be able to connect the smart ring to the iPhone and utilize all of the features that the app has to offer.