MOTIV RING: The Ring that would be King - A Cautionary Tale
Motiv (now defunct) marketing imagery harvested and featured in this article except where noted.
Long before the 2018 launch of Oura's second generation ring, Motiv was featured at CES 2016. Both companies were founded in 2013, but Motiv's initial device was a streamlined, attractive, compact design that set the standards for the modern health-centric smart ring market.
Officially launched in 2017, Motiv went on to define smart rings of the future with a number of firsts:
Motiv next to \"X-Ray\" style rendering.
ARCHITECTURE
- FOOTPRINT: All of it's sensors were packed into a traditional ring footprint (8mm wide by 2.5mm thick).
- MATERIALS: A titanium shell provided strength and durability while being lightweight.
- DURABILITY: Waterproof (to 50M)
Motiv Ring on USB Magnetic Charger.
DEVICE FEATURES
- CROSS-PLATFORM: Worked with both Android and iOS.
- BATTERY LIFE: Multi-day battery life (3 days via lithium ion battery).
- MOBILE CHARGING: Motiv's magnetic charger was a tiny USB stick...easy to lose, but very portable.
- NOTIFICATIONS: Silent (visual) notifications were enabled with an an onboard LED.
- SECURITY: Although not available at launch, a software update in 2018 added two factor authentication, proximity security, as well as "WalkID" which used your specific gait to determine that the wearer of the ring was the owner of the ring. Additional security features were in beta in 2018 that were to be out of the box features for Gen 2.
Motiv wasn't the first with sleep tracking, but they were the most advanced at the time.
APP FEATURES
- USER-FRIENDLY APP: Motiv's app provided a balance of imagery and analysis in addition to graphing of core data.
- CLOUD-CENTRIC: For better or worse, Motiv led the way with a cloud-centric model for their analysis and app.
- ACTIVITY TRACKING: Motiv featured auto-tracking for common activities like walking and running, and triggered, focused tracking for other activities.
- SLEEP TRACKING: While Motiv wasn't the first to track sleep, they were the most advanced at the time.
- ANALYSIS: What is now referred to as AI by most, personalized analysis was a core feature.
- INTEGRATION: Motiv provided synchronization/integration with Google Fit and Apple Health.
- VOICE ASSISTANT: Integrated with Amazon Alexa to provide spoken stats recorded in the Motiv app.
Motiv app login screen and home panel with analysis heading.
Motiv app home panel daily health summary. Photo by Adam Patrick Murray, IDG
Motiv app activity panel. Photo by Adam Patrick Murray, IDG
EXPANDED AVAILABILITY
- RETAIL: Retail agreements made Motiv available through Nordstrom, BestBuy, Amazon, b8ta, as well as Sharaf in the UAE.
- CLINICAL: Clinical use agreements with healthcare providers became available starting in 2018/2019.
Motiv Ring came in three brushed metal finishes, silver, rose gold and space gray.
Inspired and pushed by the launch of Oura Gen 2 (which offered a step up from Motiv Gen 1's health features while also matching the "normal" ring form factor), Motiv Gen 2 was to be launched in 2019...set to leapfrog Oura with parity of all of their health features, an expansion of security and access features, as well as the addition of wireless payments.
Unfortunately, unbeknownst to most Motiv owners, in early 2019 negotiations began between Motiv and bio-security company Proxy. This put the development and release of Motiv Gen 2 on hold, and was the death knell to Motiv's future.
In mere months after Proxy sealed the deal on April 27, 2020, Motiv's servers were shut down forever...which immediately bricked each and every of the 80,000+ Motiv rings as neither the device, nor the app function offline without connectivity to the Motiv cloud servers.
Proxy based the deal on "investing in the future of wearable devices" but in actuality, purchased Motiv for the patents...caring less about the established community of loyal owners nor about the future of Motiv as a leading player in the smart wearable space.
Fans of Smart Rings have a lot to thank Motiv for...and some of it's features seem to be out of reach in a single device to this day.