Samsung files trademarks for ‘Galaxy Glasses’ AR/VR headset and ‘Galaxy Ring’

Kyle Bradshaw | Mar 2 2023 - 1:08 pm PT

Samsung is preparing to expand its portfolio of wearable gadgets, according to new US trademarks for “Galaxy Glasses” AR/VR headsets and “Galaxy Ring” smart rings.

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Between incumbents like the Meta Quest series and rumors of Apple launching its own headset, the field of consumer AR and VR tech is ever-growing. Just last month, Samsung (in partnership with Qualcomm and Google) announced its own intentions to build “extended reality” hardware in the near future.

As of this week, we’re beginning to see the fruits of that partnership in the form of a new US trademark filed by Samsung, revealing the brand name “Galaxy Glasses.” The name alone evokes smart glasses similar to Focals by North or the Ray-Ban Stories, while the full application also covers “headsets” for both AR and VR use.

GALAXY GLASSES™ trademark registration is intended to cover the categories of virtual reality headsets; Augmented reality headsets; Headphones; Smartphones; Smart glasses.

Companies will often register trademarks that are a bit more broad than they strictly need to be to leave wiggle room for a project to grow. That being the case, it’s unfortunately too early to say whether Samsung’s big “extended reality” project will take the form of slim smart glasses or a full-on VR headset experience. What we do know is that the filing of this US trademark is a good sign for the Samsung Galaxy Glasses to launch stateside.

Meanwhile, the company has also filed a US trademark for “Samsung Galaxy Ring.” According to the description, the Galaxy Ring is intended to collect health, fitness, and sleep data, potentially replacing the need for a traditional wrist-worn fitness tracker.

SAMSUNG GALAXY RING™ trademark registration is intended to cover the categories of wearable smart devices in the nature of a smart ring for tracking, measuring, monitoring, and uploading health, fitness and sleep related information; smart rings; smartphones.

As of now, it’s not clear whether these two likely upcoming Samsung wearables are related. Based on the trademark text alone, the Galaxy Ring is only intended to collect health-related data and send it to your smartphone. For context, the Focals by North smart glasses (later acquired by Google) offer discreet controls via a joystick on a connected smart ring. It’s possible that part of Google’s partnership with Samsung could see a return of ring-based controls with the Galaxy Glasses.

As these trademarks are now being filed into the public record, it may not be long before we see Samsung formally unveil the Galaxy Glasses and Galaxy Ring wearables.

One possibility is that we might get a preview of the “unannounced version of the Android operating system meant specifically to power devices such as wearable displays” that Google is preparing for it at the upcoming Google I/O conference. Back in 2021, Google I/O served as the unveiling of Wear OS 3 in collaboration with Samsung, with the smartwatch OS ultimately debuting on the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4.

What would you want to see from a potential set of Samsung Galaxy Glasses? Would you prefer a Galaxy Ring over a traditional fitness tracker? Let us know in the comments.