@Lokki, yeah, that's what I was thinking, but thought I'd ask here first in case there were other known instances of this same thing happening. I didn't think it would be so simple as the glue issue since it's been a few months.
I've already tried pressing hard on the dead inlay with my phone (silicon case helps prevent any physical scuffing to the phone). No dice, unfortunately.
I'll email Support now. Thanks!
Just last week one of my inlays died. I use the word "died" because it fails to register on any device I have with NFC (2 android phones and 1 Windows 8 tablet). As far as I can tell it is not working. I have had my ring for just short of 4 months now.
Do you think this is a glue issue as well, or the inlay actually malfunctioning? Is there a way to test if this is a failure caused by the glue issue? My other inlay still works flawlessly with my Samsung GS3 (with case).
Went through a checkpoint between CA and USA this past weekend: going into the US they required that I take off my ring, returning to CA they didn't care about my ring.
My ring still works just fine after going through the metal detector.
So I guess it's good practice to take the ring off (since it's metal), but if they don't ask, then you're good to just leave it on and the tags won't get corrupted/erased/damaged.
@MikeInSeattle said:
@asbath I tried the bridge from a local jeweler and I can say that it is surprising comfortable. My ring is just one size too big so the ring doesn't look too unnatural on the finger. If feels like wearing baggy legged jeans with a fitted waist: loose but secure. I did need to pad the part where it touches the finger since it didn't feel as comfortable as the comfort fit portion of the ring. Thanks!
I'm glad that it works for you! I'm thinking that I may need to get a bridge, too, as I've been losing weight and getting thinner... and my fingers are following suit.
I should have also mentioned that the jeweler indicated that you can ask them to give you a slightly larger bridge so that they can bend it, making it flush with the inside of the ring's curvature. This would make it more comfortable and has zero chance of "getting loose", so to speak, over time since there is no room for bending the bridge.
I asked a jeweler about resizing a ring down to a smaller size, especially given the delicate nature of this ring. She had two recommendations: a bridge (which may not require any soldering) and beads.
A bridge is merely a piece of metal that kind of wraps around the inside of the ring to add additional material, thus causing the ring to fit better. Some bridges can be soldered to the ring, others are simply wrapped around the material and are not permanent. Her recommendation was to obviously use the non-permanent bridge to avoid damaging the outer protective layer. It would work something like this: 
Her other recommendation was the beads. These are little balls that are soldered to the inside of the ring to, again, take up more room, thus making the ring feel tighter. She says that due to the spot soldering, it would likely not damage the inlays (she thinks) or the outer protective layer. Of course this is risky because we don't really know how much short-term direct heat the inlays can take from a soldering job like that. Her recommendation for beads is to solder them directly underneath the non-inlay parts of the ring, to prevent possible damage to the inlays. It would work something like this: 
Wow. I'd dare say that you could give out 1 failed ring to each backer, and then still have enough left over for some other sort of grab-bag item.
I don't mean to belittle your efforts or those of the manufacturer, but jeez that's a lot of failed rings :(
Do your inlays look like they're actually damaged? Or do they look as though there is no major physical damage even though they're dead?
My ring has gone through all kinds of physical treatment, from your usual scuff up from moving computers and desks (just painted) to pulling an Abyss with some keep-the-door-open action. I have lots of scuffs all over my ring (pictures here, here and here), but so far there' sbeen no major damage to my ring. The inlays look completely intact and there doesn't appear to be any hard scratching or dents that dip into the inlays themselves. The protective outer coating seems to be doing an excellent job so far. I'm not intentionally trying to test the ring for physical wear, but I'm not trying to actively avoid it either. So far it's held up against everything workaday that I've tossed at it.
FWIW I haven't been babying my ring (titanium, transparent/black) and it's still working almost a month later. No problems with either inlay. I also play ultimate (lunch breaks with the office mates), and though I've scuffed up the outer polish, the inlays don't seem to have been affected by constant impacts with the frisbee (your usual 175g disc).
Perhaps your original ring's inlays weren't secured properly by the cement?
I found that my sweet spot on my S3 was right beside the "G" in the Samsung logo on the back, vertically parallel to the speaker. Basically if you drew imaginary lines from the speaker and "G", where those lines intersect is where my sweet spot is. I no longer need a sticker to remind me of that location because it's become muscle memory for me.
@Robinhuett said:
Hi,
Am I to late for the party?
I'm currently building an application to authenticate and unlock windows via the nfc ring. Unfortunately I will have to wait till my rings arrive to actually test it.
If anyone is interested I can share the source (I do it anyways, when it's in a state where it can be tested...).
I can help you test it, maybe even help you with the application itself. I had started an application of my own, but Real Life happened and it's been put on hold until Real Life goes away.
PM me your contact details and maybe we can work together on this!
@johnyma22 said:
ahaha @NFCringTom worst mspaint ever, go download inkscape and embrace being awesome.
...I don't know, I've seen worse ;)
They currently aren't shipping carbon fibre rings, and you should have received a survey asking you what alternative inlays you'd like. You'll eventually get a voucher for a CF ring when they are available.
So for now, you should be able to change the order for your two inlays :)
Yeah I tried using the Xposed module NFCLockScreenOffEnabler, and it works really well. Problem is that it works too well. Sometimes I'd just be resting my hand on my leg and accidentally unlocking my phone without my knowledge of it. Using the NFC Unlock Control helps mitigate that risk some, but still your screen will be on for longer than you'd like, thus draining your battery.
A great module/app, but just be warned that you might be triggering your screen more often than you'd like
huh, it really puts the "tap" into a double tap, doesn't it? :)
Do I spot an Arduino board on that gun?
@johnyma22 said:
We designed and tested the rings to take a lot of ESD beating, it's likely your skin will be damaged prior to the ring.
I lost my actual test results for this but it was basically a case of using one of those static generators and zapping it at different voltages.
The electronics of the ring are never exposed to titanium and our absorber layer acts as an insulator.
Basically you should be fine from ESD.
I'd be happy if someone wants to run some tests to see what environments of ESD the ring can tolerate, 5 free visual fail rings to whoever gets the best/most enlightening/well documented results :P
Do wool socks and carpet count as a proper test environment? ;)
Can the NFC tags in the ring get damaged by electrostatic discharge?
Was just walking down the hallway of the office today and reached for my office door handle - ZAP. I'm not one to drag my feet when I walk, so it wasn't a huge static shock, but I can imagine that with the right factors you could recharge a couple of Eneloops with enough of a jolt.
Nothing happened to the tags in my ring, but I was wondering in general if the NFC tags could be damaged by a strong enough ESD? I don't think titanium conducts electricity like copper does, but could it carry enough that the NFC tags could fry themselves? Or are these NTAG203's the newer ones from NXP that are safe from ESD?
@DogTag said:
Hi!
Would a tutorial on writing a simple Tasker/Trigger program for Android to broaden the NFC ring functionality count for this? Something like my phone reads the ring and depending on several variables, it does something or something else... : )
What kind of functionality are you specifically think of? Tasker is pretty straight forward, mostly just a bunch of IFs and ELSEs, but if you went and wrote an Android app from scratch... that might have a better chance of counting than just a simple script
OK following up on this. Because I'm using nightly builds on my ROM, I went back to the last stable one, on Android 4.3. Things worked better. So I cherry picked a nightly release from April 10, 2014, and this build seems to work just as well for me as the older stable 4.3 release did. All tests below are on PACman 4.4.2 build April 10, 2014. Now I can reliably read/write to all 4 inlays, still with some strange issues.
Here are some things that I tried on my Galaxy S3 phone:
All Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and URL tags work. Long URL tags also fail, seems to also be a limitation of the memory size (which is expected).
What's irking me is that a string of 30 consecutive digits fails, but a string of 90 characters (letters and spaces) can be saved? Is this a bug with the application or maybe the tag?
I'm going to try and install the non-beta 0.1 version and see if this same issue with long digits happens.
@johnyma22 said:
Yep, your Custom ROM prolly has incompatible NFC libraries.
Is there a list of which libraries are known to work, or perhaps are required to work?
Just as a test yesterday, I used another NFC app to send text to my tablet PC. The tablet was able to read the text "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." that I sent from phone to PC. So I don't know if this is an OS software issue (e.g. library in ROM is inadequate/unavailable) vs app software issue (e.g. app isn't reading the library).
The Android app I used to test the sending of text was NFC TagControl (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tagcontrol)