Pretty disappointing considering two charging contacts are probably not that hard to add and would stop this being e-waste cause they misestimated bluetooth energy use
this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2025
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Single use ring :(
Fuck. This is just a stepping stone to single-use phones. They're going to take away the charging port altogether and make you just buy a new device every four weeks.
TL;DR:
Price:
"Under $100":
After [the preorder], it will go up to $99.
Battery is not rechargeable:
And what happens when the battery runs out? You just send the ring back to be recycled.
Runtime:
The integrated battery will power the device for 12–14 total hours of recording. The designers estimate that to be roughly two years of usage if you record 10 to 20 short voice notes per day.
- "Roughly two years" = lets say that's 20 months
- 12 hours = 43.200 seconds = 72 seconds/day
- "10-20 short voice notes" = 3.6-7.2 seconds per note
Features:
- Records only while pressing the button
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The recording is converted to text and fed into a large language model (LLM) that runs locally on your device to take actions. The speech-to-text process and LLM operate in the open source Pebble app, and no data from your notes is sent to the Internet. However, there is an optional online backup service for your recordings.
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A model small enough to run on your phone has to focus on specific functionality rather than doing everything like a big cloud-based AI
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- Create or add to notes
- Set reminder
- Create alarm
- Create timer
- Play/pause/skip music track (via button press)
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also designed to be hacking-friendly. The audio and transcribed text is yours [...] You can route it to a different app via a webhook, and the LLM supports model context protocol (MCP), so you can add new functionality that also runs locally. The AI model will also be released as an open source project.
As a hardware product, it's the stupidest thing I've heard about since the shakeweight. A non-rechargeable Bluetooth microphone disguised as a tacky ring.
Who is the customer? Who takes "voice notes" enough to need to add a button for it to their hand? Or, ever?
Buried among all the stupid ideas seems to be the promise of offering a Siri/Bixby/Alexa like experience that runs entirely locally on your phone that doesn't have a home to phone back to. Does it have to be LLM-based, or is that just all tech bros can do anymore? And why can't the phone's own mic, or the mic in a Pebble smart watch, do that job? Why center it on a nearly non-functional device?
Remember those bluetooth earbuds that business jackasses wore all the time back in the 2000s? This does less than that.
I had plans to order a watch, but not a chance now. This whole ring thing feels very much like big corpo BS.
I just want Time Round 2, dammit.
Why do companies always come up with these "AI voice memo" devices? Does the general public even like these?