TLDR

1. Some of our team are in China overseeing production to get them pushed through as accurately & fast as possible
2. We will email you individually when we ship your ring (add frodo@nfcring.com to your safe senders list), we’re still on schedule to ship the next phase of rings in 2 or 3 weeks so roughly the 10th of March.
3. We will be emailing you before we ship the next batches with your order details on.

eTLDR

1. Our returns, replacements and refunds process documentation is now live, thanks to everyone who contributed
2. We’ve been in talks with mobile phone manufacturers about doing our product testing with their phones when they design new antennas so they can optimize their antennas for small tags and we can optimize our rings for phones.
3. We’ve been able to source a tighter weave Carbon Fiber, it’s still not exactly the same as the one from the images but we’re happy with it.
4. There are loads of new App updates, go grab em and remember to give us feedback on our beta Apps if you are on the beta program.
5. We’re looking for a partner to work with to make mobile phone/device cases for the NFC Ring, if you know a company that might be a suitable fit please get in touch
6. The deadline for order changes/requests has now passed, if you haven’t got your order in yet you will be limited to choosing to one of the rings we are launching during pre-orders.
7. There is a QA with me(John)
8. We have a date set for pre-orders and a press release pending, if any press/media folk want to get access to the press release please get in touch.

We’re getting lots of feedback about phase one deliveries

We’re getting a lot of positive feedback about the first rings that have landed:

@MrEvensen Tweeted:
“After using the @NfcRing for about a week now, I have almost forgotten the password for my mobile and tablet..”

Alex Haynes posted:
“I absolutely LOVE unlocking my phone with a touch. Great product.”

Jeremey posted:
“Very nice, can’t wait to work out some uses for it. It did come a bit bigger than I had planned but it fits my middle finger. I had hoped to wear it in place of my wedding ring but now I can be a pimp with a ring on each hand.”

Just  as a reminder to ring bearers, the sweet spot is supposed to be small,  it’s small for security and tuning reasons and also remember the stickers help you find your sweet spot when you can’t see it, try to use  them until you get used to knowing where your sweet spot is!

There  have been a few people having a difficult experience on the Note and Samsung S3, we’re going to keep an eye on this and see how it unfolds,  don’t worry though if you find your ring doesn’t work with your phone,  we will do everything we can to ensure you have a positive experience.  We also had a popular blog showing a video about a poor experience on an Moto X, we believe that both positive and negative reviews are needed for us to improve the user experience of the ring so do take a minute to check out Derek R’s experience.   No new technology is perfect, this is only the beginning.

Faulty Ring Returns

Unfortunately a few faulty rings seem to have slipped through our QA process, we’re dealing with those through our returns process and that seems to be going really smoothly.  Thankfully it’s a tiny percentage, < 0.5%.   We ask that when you receive your ring if you are having issues making it work with your phone that you head over to the forums and get some support from our amazing community.

Making a difference

In other good news we’re having conversations with phone manufacturers who are modifying their antenna designs to match smaller antennas, this goes to show how much impact we (and others) are having and really takes NFC into a whole new space which is great!

Carbon Fiber

We were able to source a tighter weave of Carbon Fiber, it’s still not the same style weave from the initial designs but we’re happy with the end result and we hope to have some pictures over the next week.  As mentioned previously, the carbon fiber rings will still be the last rings to ship.

App updates

NFC Ring Unlock has had lots of bug-fixes applied, please update to absorb them.
NFC Ring Control has had lots of new features and bug-fixes added including the ability to register your ring to get an unlock code for NFC Ring Unlock.  This functionality is currently only available to beta testers but we hope to get it pushed through to production over the next few weeks.  Contributions to the Apps in the way of issues/wiki updates/pull requests are very welcome, we want as much community involvement as possible so don’t be scared to get involved!

Cases

We’re hearing a lot of people ask for cases with a cut out for where to place your NFC Ring, we’re looking for partners who can help us make this happen.  If you happen to know a company that might be an ideal “fit” then please leave a comment!

Deadline for orders

The deadline for order changes/requests has now passed, if you haven’t got your order in yet you will be limited to choosing to one of the rings we are launching during pre-orders.

Sending messages Via Kickstarter

Kickstarter messages are now going to an inbox we aren’t checking frequently, the best way to contact our team is to email support@nfcring.com that way we can use a ticketing system to manage your issue.  If you think maybe the community might be able to help with your issue then head over to the forums at http://forum.nfcring.com being mindful to read the documentation and search for your issue online before posting!

Q&A with John

Our community asked John a bunch of questions and he gave some answers, y’know Q&A stylee.

Active Forum

Our forum is bustling with activity, I just wanted to extend my (and our team’s) thanks to our Mods Lokki and Lafunamor who are doing a sterling job of keeping things ticking over smoothly and creating new content to help everyone adopt this new technology.  I know I say this a lot but our community is the cornerstone of this project, please do engage with each other over both positive and negative aspects of your experience.

EMVizzle

John was interiewed for Gemalto Magazine talking about the importance of our community.  Gemalto are the biggest player in the NFC payments market so we’re a step closer to that holy grail that is EMV.  See page 36

Pre-Orders

We have a date set for pre-orders, the big news here is that as promised Kickstarter backers will be getting a 25% discount and also early access to place orders. It’s very likely we are going to sell out very fast as we have a limited supply of rings for this first release. We will be announcing more news over the coming weeks.

Press / Media folks

We’ve been getting in touch with press and media providing our latest press release. If you’re from the realm of journalism and we haven’t been in touch yet then please email us and we will get you the resources you need to craft some fancy-word-magika.

Finally

Fact: We’re late on shipping. We’re working as hard and as fast as we can to get your rings out and we’re really grateful for the patience you guys have shown us. We know this has been a long and arduous journey, but we’re finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel! 🙂 Thank you!