Samsung Files Patent for a Health Ring That Charges Whichever Side Faces Up
Samsung's filing for a health-tracking ring goes after a tiny daily annoyance: which side of the ring faces up on the charger. Its answer is two coils in the cradle and a ring laid out like a clock face.
What Samsung's flip-either-way ring charger does
You're half asleep at the end of the night, sliding your health-tracking ring onto its little charging post. You don't check which side is up. By morning, you'd like it to be full.
Samsung's filing describes a ring and cradle built so that works. The cradle is a small post you slide the ring over, with a groove that matches a bump on the inside of the ring. Both are symmetrical, so the ring fits either way up. Hidden in the cradle are two charging coils, one for each orientation, so one is always lined up with the ring's receiving coil.
Inside the ring, the parts are arranged like a clock face: a curved battery at the top, a charging coil at one end of it, a Bluetooth antenna at the other end, and the health sensors along the bottom.
… a curved battery disposed inside the housing; a first wireless charging coil configured to wirelessly charge the curved battery via at least a portion of the inner housing …
Translation: The ring packs a curved battery and a charging coil that powers it from the inside.
How the ring packs a battery, coil and sensors
The ring has a metal outer shell and a plastic inner band that touches your finger. Inside, a curved battery fills the top. A charging coil (a loop of wire that receives power wirelessly) sits at one end of the battery, a Bluetooth antenna sits at the other end, and the health sensors sit in between, on the far side of the ring.
The filing spends a lot of effort on keeping the ring thin:
- The coil sits on one side of a circuit board and the power-management parts sit on the other, so the whole stack is no thicker than the battery.
- Because the inner band is curved, the coil has four wiring layers in the middle and a fifth near its edges. The extra metal cuts resistance and raises the coil's Q value (a score for how efficiently it passes power).
- The inner band is thinner where the coil sits, so it gets closer to the charger.
The cradle is a base with a cylindrical post. A bump on the inside of the ring fits a groove in the post, and since both are symmetrical, the ring can go on either way up. A third coil in the cradle serves one orientation and a fourth serves the other. One variation puts a second coil in the ring too, so two coils charge at once.
… at least one sensor configured to obtain data from a user and disposed at a third portion located between the first portion and the second portion.
Translation: Built in health sensors sit between the battery and antenna to track user data.
What a flip-proof ring charger means for you
If you wear a ring to track your sleep, heart rate and blood oxygen, charging is the chore that interrupts it. A cradle that accepts the ring either way up takes a little friction out of that routine. The layout is also aimed at keeping the ring thin, which matters when the thing lives on your finger all day.
The sensor described shines red and infrared light into your finger to read heart rate and blood oxygen. Nothing here changes what the ring measures. The filing lists blood sugar as a possible reading but gives no method for it. The value is in comfort and convenience: a smaller ring, a simpler nightly habit, and fewer mornings with a dead tracker.
That makes this Samsung's 44th filing we've tracked in our Battery & power coverage since May, adding to work like the robot charger-finding patent and the offline hub power explainer.
Nothing in this filing needs new science or new software. It is a layout of parts that anyone who follows wearables will recognize: a curved battery, a charging coil, a Bluetooth antenna and a light sensor. That puts it close to a shippable design, because the remaining work is manufacturing.
The hard part sits on the factory floor. The ring needs a housing with a thin plastic window where the coil sits, a circuit stack that fits under the battery's thickness, and a cradle with two precisely placed coils. Those are tooling and testing jobs, and they have to exist before anything ships.
The filing gives no battery life, charging speed or ring size, so the document can't say how this layout performs. The shortest route to a product is a ring and cradle designed together and sold as a pair.
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The drawings
30 drawing sheets from US 2026/0342132 A1 · click any drawing to enlarge
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