From Smartphone to Smart Earring
January 08, 26
First there was the smartphone, then came the smartwatch, followed by the smart ring. And now the latest must-have is the smart earring.
It will track your heart rate, sleep patterns and posture. It captures health signals that are impossible to measure by a device worn on the wrist or finger.
And it will replace your earbuds, hooking up to your phone for music, calls and voice assistants.
The smart earring - the tech is all crammed into just one of the pair - is a marvel of miniaturization.
It incorporates the same basic components as a smart ring - a battery, microcontroller, antenna, temperature and motion sensors and a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) radio - all shrunk down so they're small and light enough to be worn on an ear.
The first smart earring was launched by Canada-based Ear-o-Smart, featuring just vibration alerts for phone notifications.
Lumia, founded in early 2020 by ex-Bose engineers and serial entrepreneurs, says its earrings are the world's smallest wearable device at under one gram, a fifth the weight of an AirPod.
Pic shows a Lumia earring back
Peripherii lets the wearer tap the earring to answer calls, and to play or pause music.
Joule has designed the smart element to connect to the wearer's own post-style earrings, leaving them to make the fashion decisions.
Smart earrings are still in their infancy and it's still too small for a clear leader to have emerged. It's a very niche market within the broader smart jewelry sector.
But once makers have sufficiently refined the smart part, the next step will be the jewelry part. And that means diamonds.
Diamond-encrusted smartphones have been a thing for the last couple of decades - anything from an entry-level model with diamond accents ($3,000) all the way up to the Falcon Supernova iPhone 6 Pink Diamond Edition, at a world-beating $48.5m.
Apple doesn't do diamond versions of its watches, but there are plenty of third-party customizers who do, for anything from $7,000 to $280,000. And who also add bling to other smartwatches.
Smart rings are a relative newcomer but several manufacturers already offer diamond versions.
Vertu offers a range with accent (lab grown) diamonds embedded in pivoting, double-layered bezels, priced at up to $2,500.
Samsung, Oura and Ultrahuman have all brought out gold, platinum or titanium versions of existing models.
And French startup Spktrl has developed a smart ring set with a 1.5-carat emerald-cut diamond (also lab grown) that glows different colors for different smartphone notifications. It's expected to sell for $3,000.
All of this paves the way for diamond-set smart earrings as a new, albeit specialty, product range. And diamonds are a perfect fit.
They don't really belong on a phone, it's not their natural home (even though they offer plenty of real estate).
But a watch, yes. A ring also yes. And an earring, even more so.
Have a fabulous weekend.