Movano is set to relaunch the Evie Ring after a challenging launch earlier this year.
The Evie Ring was beset by complaints over delivery times, devices not working, and poor customer service. Even for those who did get a working Ring, reviews criticized basic insights and poor sleep tracking – and Wareable’s sample stopped working in the review period.
These complaints led to Movano pulling the Evie Ring from sale earlier in 2024. However, it’s coming back on sale on 17 September 2024 and will include:
- More detailed AI-based insights that highlight correlations between users’ menstrual cycle, heart health, sleep, mood, and energy
- Auto activity detection to sense when users are biking, jogging, walking, and engaging in a general workout
- Improved accuracy in both sleep and heart rate during activity
- An Android version of the app shortly after relaunch
Movano CEO, John Mastrototaro, spoke exclusively to the PULSE by Wareable podcast to explain the challenges and discuss what’s changed for the relaunch.
“In fairness, the reception’s been mixed. On the positive side, people love the female focus of the ring,” he said. “Where we had some challenges as a small company is the availability. People were excited about getting the ring, and they wanted to get it right away. Unfortunately, due to various issues, we couldn’t get it to them as quickly as they wanted it, and that put a strain on our customer service line as well.”
And it wasn’t just availability.
Tackling tech issues and listening to users
“We had issues with the accuracy of our sleep tracking, in terms of the timing and stages, and the lack of insights. We also faced challenges with some component failures or breakages at a certain point that we’ve identified. We conducted an extensive analysis of the failure modes. Over these past four months, we’ve addressed all of them with enhancements to the design and assembly processes.”
However, Mastrototaro said that he felt the majority of Evie customers were understanding:
“As a company, our hearts are in the right place. We’re listening to our customers, and we’re doing the best we can. So for the majority, I think we’re on board now. There may be some people who were disappointed, and we may have lost them, but fortunately, I believe the majority are folks who recognize that we’re a startup doing the best we can. We’re listening to them.”
In the year it’s taken to get Evie to market and iron out these problems, Oura, Ultrahuman, and now the Samsung Galaxy Ring have all continued innovating. But Mastrototaro believes that the Evie Ring’s focus on women’s feedback still gives it an advantage:
“We spoke to over 1,000 women when we were developing this product, and we heard from them what they wanted from a product like this. Most of the women we spoke to just wanted to feel more energy throughout the day, to sleep better, and to feel healthier about their bodies.
“You can almost paralyze people by providing new little indicators, new metrics, and new scores—and there’s fatigue with all the scoring. They just want to feel better. They’re not always in competition with everybody else.”
The relaunched Evie Ring will be available from 17 September 2024, and the company will have stock of all colors and sizes ready to go.
