Smarty Ring: For People Married to Their Smartphones

Dec. 11, 2013— -- It's become a compulsion for many smartphone owners to check their device to see if they've missed an incoming call, tweet or status update. The Smarty Ring is looking to curb that urge, as nearly any type of phone notification will show up on the namesake device.

Using the crowdfunding service Indiegogo, the project has raised more than $180,000 in the past month. The company, also named Smarty Ring, expects that backers can expect their own rings to be delivered in April 2014.

According to Karthik Kumar, Smarty Ring's head of marketing, it's as much a fashion statement as it is a piece of technology. "Smarty Ring is a high-tech as well as high-fashion wearable jewelry for [people] who love to wear rings and won't wear a watch," he told ABC News in an email.

The phone's display has several icons that light up with each notification. According to the company's Indiegogo page, the ring can keep track of emails, texts and social media notifications.

But since the rings won't have a text display, you will need to use whip out your phone to find out what happened -- so much for curbing that smartphone compulsion.

Smarty Ring will be compatible with both iOS and Android phones, and comes with its own app so that users can pick and choose which services to sync with the ring. In addition, the company has promised that the ring will have a shelf life of 24 hours.

The ring is expected to retail for $275, considerably more than that other crowdfunded wearable electronic, the $150 Pebble Smartwatch.

Patrick Moorhead, the principal analyst for Moor Insights and Strategy, said that the smart ring might not have as successful a run as the smartwatch.

"Compared to [the] Pebble, the Smarty Ring will be compelling to a much smaller, geekier tech audience," he said. "It's expensive, impossible to hide, and doesn't really solve a problem that [users] think they have."