GalaRing, some thoughts and opinions
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I bought a Galaring to check it out and here are my thoughts.
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There isn't such a thing as Titanium Steel, it's a steel ring, 915L if I'm not mistaken. This ring is legal to sell in the EU but I would advise against wearing it 24x7 especially if you sweat as the Nickel content will react with your skin. We had the same issue with our initial prototypes to the point we switched to titanium thanks to our community.
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The lack of sizes are no good for most people as sizing of a ring is really important for a comfortable fit.
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The ring isn't waterproof by any stretch of the imagination, the Galaring claim here is completely false.
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The leather peels off very easily, it's bizarre they chose this approach but it looks kinda nice, I'm not convinced it's real leather tho.
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It's pretty much a straight copy of our initial prototype (the one from the kickstarter images) but without our waterproofing / clear coat layer, same tags etc. Although the weird thing is the tags aren't aligned at 180degrees so aren't quite top/bottom, I can only assume this is a manufacturing flaw because it provides a weird astetic to the ring.
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It's huge(way wider than our alpha) and has really hard edges, it's weird their factory didn't tell them to use a comfort fit on such a large ring, any experienced jewelry maker or even anyone that has read my blog about ring form factors would know this is the correct approach.
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The read performance is sadly terrible, Galaring is using Smartrac midas tags which despite being some of the best antennas on the market aren't tuned to metal. This was the big leap we were able to make on this project and requires a lot of technical skill. I documented this process, I guess Galaring didn't watch our videos about tuning etc. and decided to put out this ring anyway knowing it would fail in a lot of environments.
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It's not poorly made, for the price it's a fair product, I mean you get what you pay for,.. Steel jewelry for $20 is common, the Smartrac Midas tags cost 10cents or so when purchased in rolls of 10k compared to our tags which cost a dollar or so per unit because we custom build them..
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The ring does infringe on our patents and misuses our trademark however that doesn't mean we have to be whiney about it, ultimately we hope that Galaring see the value in the progress we have made and license some of our technology, our attorneys will flesh that bit out though. I have reached out to Ricky and let him know about his products flaws before posting this so it's not like I'm being aggressive. Ultimately I want what's best for consumers experience of technology enabled rings long term, I think Ricky is doing a good job of selling cheap rings to the lowest part of the market and also building a distribution network, I have a lot of respect for Ricky, way more than I do the plethora of projects we're seeing landing on indiegogo that are pure vaporware.
Personally, I wouldn't want to compete with Galaring on their unit price, they are very welcome to sell a ring that doesn't provide a good customer experience for a cheap price, ultimately ring wearers will come to us and stick with us for a lifetime because we're selling something that genuinly works and has the support of an entire community behind it :)
Please do draw your own conclusion tho, I just wanted to share my personal thoughts and opinions.
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Heh, that's pretty amusing - it was next on my list of to-do. I wanted to get one and pull it apart to see what they'd done. I was actually wondering if it was NFCRings that hadn't passed QA and had fallen off the radar somewhere along the line. Glad to hear that doesn't seem to be the case.
I'm thinking I may still pick one up, purely so I can say 'well, this here is the alternative' before I give someone your web address.
I certainly wont be wearing it, pleather or goat skin or whatever they've used just seems, well, tacky to me.
Any chance of a picature of the one you have? Galaring ads use 3 or so different renders as far as I can make out, and it's not obvious which one is the right one.
Hopefully you'll get somewhere with the licencing, it can only help everyone in the end! -
hi?I am Ricky?the inventor of GalaRing?Beacuse my English not well ,so i will use chinese language? you can use google thanslate to see what i say
????????????????????????
NFC???????????sony????????????????????????????? ??????????????????????NFC ring?????NFC?????? ???????????????2013?3????????????NFC?????????????John???? ???????????????????????????????????NFC??? ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ?????????????????John??????????? ?????????????????????????????
????????????????????????copy?????????????app?????john??????????????????????
??????? 316L??????915L??????????????316L?????????? ????????????????????NFC????????????????????nfcring?????? ??????????NFC????????????????????????????????????????????????????
?????????????????????
??????????????email??freedomz#gmail.com ???
I will be here to discuss with the Chinese , and to answer your questions .
NFC as a general technique by sony and Philips jointly promote , so technically we are not at the core of what the mystery. As a product, the Chinese game company 's electronic Nutshell than NFC ring earlier proposed the concept of NFC rings. Our small business team in Shenzhen, China , from March 2013 to start a business , and is ready to make NFC ring, was also not aware of a grand and John's work . We are in Shenzhen, from design to production , given the different features , we used two NFC tags . We can think about themselves in the ring in this position, with the case of two labels , can play a very small space design, is unlikely to make too many different scenarios. So, after our product launch , and John found a creative product appeared crash . We have applied for patent protection in China and Hong Kong , and soon launched a product batch .
I think it's just the two teams on the crash in the creative , there is the question of who who copy , especially our own design ideas and john app is completely different , and we have more new product plans.
Our products are made ??of 316L steel, rather than 915L ( did not have the model ) , is a popular saying titanium steel 316L steel ; waterproof performance is also tested , of course, you can not use any function of NFC in the water, because the water itself blocking signal , which is the same nfcring . As regards the sensor signal , NFC is originally a near field communication protocol, so that the use of better chip , he can not be very good from the sensor , which is used as a ring causes a relatively small chip .
So , I think I should let everyone know what's going on :)
I also welcome to communicate with us , my email is : freedomz#gmail.com Thank you !
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Hey Ricky, thanks for sharing your thoughts, it's great we can have conversations like this in the public domain.
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Glad you accept your ring isn't titanium, perhaps your marketing should reflect this? In the EU and US you should probably recall your products as you have accepted they violated the Sales of Goods act. :(
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Sorry but your ring isn't waterproof. If you want I can prove that your ring isn't waterproof? I know 100% it isn't because the smartrac midas isn't itself a waterproof unit and the water can easily penetrate your "leather". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_Code
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It's worth letting everyone know we(Both McLear Ltd and Galagreat) aren't being aggressive on our patent(s), that means we can work together to improve our products. I did ask Ricky to share some evidence of his creation that is in the public domain to back up his claims that he had his design completed before we launched on Kickstarter but he was unable to provide this so I think we're all still skeptical, should I see this evidence I will be very happy to change my opinion. All that being said though it doesn't even really matter because we're all being cool about it :)
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The main issue we have is confusing customers, we have had Galagreat customers email us saying they have "bought one of our rings", we have had to let them know they haven't bought one of our products. We're also concerned about if the GalaRing is what it says it is, which it isn't, it isn't an "NFC Ring", it isn't tuned to 13.56Mhz, it isn't titanium and it isn't waterproof. These issues will lead to a poor customer experience which ultimately will hurt consumers, we want everyone to win here and hopefully Galaring can resolve those 4 major issues and everyone wins!
Also Ricky what's with the inlays not being on opposite sides! Is that intentional?!
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It's worth letting everyone know we(Both McLear Ltd and Galagreat) aren't being aggressive on our patent(s), that means we can work together to improve our products. I did ask Ricky to share some evidence of his creation that is in the public domain to back up his claims that he had his design completed before we launched on Kickstarter but he was unable to provide this so I think we're all still skeptical, should I see this evidence I will be very happy to change my opinion. All that being said though it doesn't even really matter because we're all being cool about it :)
Respect for this! :D
And as you say, lets all just work together and make stuff better ;)
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I grabbed a Galaring more because I decided I wanted one and it was the only one I found released, than for any aesthetic/pricing reason. By and large I'd have to say John is spot on. No idea what it's made of - I assumed steel before buying it, as titanium seemed a bit far fetched. Certainly wearing it does create effects like he mentioned.
Also after some wear mine has micro scratches all over the metal, which I'm not sure whether titanium would exhibit. I ordered the biggest (not many options), figuring it would be a better gamble. It is a bit loose on my pinky finger, fits snugly on the next finger, and is too small for the other 2 fingers.
The main sad thing is that it's readability is very lacking. My Nexus 4 has a cheap rubber/plastic cover, and while many other NFC things have been easily readable through it (stickers, etc), the Galaring is only readable if the phone is naked.
What's the approximate ETA/cost on the NFC ring, and does it have stronger signal than the Galaring? I'd have considered $50 to be still worth it, had I known there would have been a better alternative coming out in the next couple of weeks.
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Hi, if you register your email at http://nfcring.com/ then you'll be notified when they're available.
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"I ordered the biggest (not many options), figuring it would be a better gamble. It is a bit loose on my pinky finger, " <-- You sir need an alpha NFC Ring if the largest only just fits your pink!
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Indeed, I do have fat fingers :P stubby also tho, and you never forget you're wearing the Galaring, given it's massive depth. Hopefully yours is a more normal ring depth. Hey also, would be cool in a black steel look (though plain silver works too)
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Can I order a ring yet? The site says it's still at preorders, however the kickstarter page says for £22 or so can get a ring, due to be delivered (from?) Sept 2013?
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Hey Ben, yeah the classic and alpha rings are both way more comfortable than the GalaRings -- Did you get on the mailing list? We're gonna be taking pre-orders soon so get wallet prepared to throw it at the screen ;)
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Review of the Galaring .. [url:29bezopb]http://techday.com/reviews/review-galaring-g1-nfc-ring/[/url:29bezopb]
"Nope, this thing, to put it bluntly, is a piece of crap. I tried it with both an LG G2 and an Asus Nexus 7, I could read and write (barely) with the Nexus 7 to one chip but it was frustration trying to get it to be read and after a while I just gave up."
Ouch ;\ Ricky you might wanna jump on this review and comment to see if you can help the author use your product.
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It burns...
That was a rather scathing review!
