Samsung brings sleep apnea risk detection to the Galaxy Ring

A quiet day: Samsung moves its sleep apnea feature onto a smart ring for the first time, and Fairphone writes about its first phone still running.

Galaxy Ring gets sleep apnea risk detection

Samsung says an updated Sleep Apnea feature is now available on the Galaxy Watch and the Galaxy Ring, and that it is the first company to offer sleep apnea risk detection on a smart ring. The feature runs in the Samsung Health Monitor app. Samsung says its new algorithm looks at vitals during sleep in more depth and now gives insight into the level of breathing disruptions, where the previous version only assessed risk.

The feature needs two nights of valid data within a 10-day period. It is meant for adults aged 18 and older who have not been diagnosed with sleep apnea, and Samsung says it should not replace diagnosis by a clinician. On the watch side it is available on the Galaxy Watch 9 with Wear OS 7.0 or higher; Samsung says support for the Galaxy Watch 7 and 8 will follow in future software updates.

The update follows clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration in July and approval from Korea’s Ministry of Food and Drug Safety. Samsung’s Dutch release says this clears the way to roll the feature out in all countries where the Galaxy Ring is sold, but neither release names a European regulator, a date or a price for European users.

Source: Samsung Global and Samsung Netherlands

Fairphone 1 still in use after 13 years

Fairphone published a story on 5 November about two owners who still use the Fairphone 1, its first phone. It is a company-written piece, not a product launch, and carries no price or availability.

According to Fairphone, a Dutch owner’s phone needed only two replacement batteries over 12 years and now runs a distributed computing project for scientific research. A second owner in Munich used hers daily from early 2014 until 2021, with one battery swap, and says she took it apart and dried it after it fell in water. Fairphone says the community has grown from the first pre-orders to over a million devices worldwide.

The repairability claims here are Fairphone’s own and rest on two owners’ accounts, not on a score. We follow Fairphone’s repair story on the earlier Fairbuds 2 repairability post.

Source: Fairphone