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While smart rings aren’t new by any means, Samsung’s Galaxy Ring is the first such product from a major consumer tech brand. After a long wait, it finally launched just under two weeks ago at the company’s Galaxy Unpacked event alongside new foldables, headphones and smartwatches. Samsung’s smart ring is particularly notable because, while it’s slightly more expensive than its flagship competitors at $399.99, it doesn’t require any subscription fees to use its features. However, this may not always be the case, at least for future features.

The Samsung Galaxy Ring has a handful of health sensors like a heart rate monitor, sleep tracker, blood oxygen tracker, step counter, and more. These sensors power the Galaxy Ring’s various health and fitness tracking features, which include continuous sleep monitoring, heart rate monitoring, activity tracking, workout detection, cycle tracking, and more. Because the Galaxy Ring doesn’t have a display, all the health and fitness data it collects must be viewed through the Samsung Health app on the Android smartphone it’s connected to.

At Galaxy Unpacked, Samsung promised that none of the Galaxy Ring’s features require an additional subscription fee to access. However, buried in a footnote on one of the slides shown during the presentation is text suggesting that this promise only applies to “currently available Samsung Galaxy features.” For “future Samsung Health features,” Samsung warns that “various terms and conditions may apply.”

“Galaxy Ring must be paired with a Samsung Galaxy smartphone running Android 11.0 or higher and a minimum of 1.5GB of storage. Samsung Health app (v6.27 or later) and Samsung account login required. Service availability may vary by country or region. Currently available Samsung Health features that use the Samsung Galaxy Ring are provided without a monthly subscription. Different terms may apply to future Samsung Health features.“

While this doesn’t guarantee Samsung will charge a subscription fee for future Galaxy Ring features, it does leave the door open for such a possibility. Whether it will actually happen, however, we cannot say. Earlier rumors suggested that Samsung plans to charge a monthly subscription for some Galaxy Ring features. Some articles published since the Ring’s launch have stated unequivocally that Samsung has no plans to charge for any Ring features, now or in the future, while others suggest that this is only the case for now.

If Samsung ends up charging a subscription fee for the Galaxy Ring’s features, it wouldn’t even be out of the ordinary for them. After all, Galaxy AI features are currently available for free on the Samsung Galaxy S24 series, but there’s a caveat: they’re only guaranteed to be free until 2025. That caveat was similarly buried in a footnote during January’s Galaxy Unpacked event, so it’s clear that Samsung doesn’t want to guarantee free access to every feature — especially resource-intensive AI — forever.

Various Samsung Health features now fall under the Galaxy AI umbrella, including Galaxy Ring’s Energy Score and Wellness Tips features. Since Samsung does not guarantee that the Galaxy AI features will be free after 2025, then these two features could theoretically be isolated after 2025. However, since these two features are currently available (as long as you pair a Samsung phone Galaxy with Galaxy Ring), it’s likely Samsung won’t charge for them in the future given their launch commitment.

Galaxy Ring’s biggest competitor, Oura Ring, starts at $299 but charges a $5.99/month subscription. So even though some of the Oura options cost less up front, many people think the Samsung option is better value. However, if Samsung imposes a subscription fee in the future, this calculation may change. However, we will have to wait and see if they will indeed decide to charge a subscription fee in the future and if so, how much they will charge and what features they will lock behind the subscription.