This is Optimizer, a weekly newsletter sent every Friday from Verge senior reviewer Victoria Song that dissects and discusses the latest phones, smartwatches, apps, and other gizmos that swear they’re going to change your life. Optimizer arrives in our subscribers’ inboxes at 10AM ET. Opt in for Optimizer here.
I had a major problem during the unboxing of my Meta Ray-Ban Display review unit. To control the glasses’ Display, you need to wear a separate neural band on your dominant wrist. That isn’t a problem for most people, but I test wearables for a living. I’m always double-wristing smartwatches. That particular day, my dominant wrist was otherwise occupied by the Google Pixel Watch 4. If the neural band and Pixel Watch 4 couldn’t play nicely together, I was in a real pickle.
Thankfully, they did play nicely together. The Oura Ring 4 on my right index finger, however, did not. It interfered with the scrolling gestures, so I had to switch it to my other hand.
Cue a facepalm that would’ve made Captain Picard proud.
Later that day, I tended to the dumpster fire that is my inbox. Various wearable companies had laid siege. Had I finished testing their device? Would I be interested in testing yet another? It’s anecdotal, but in 2025, I’ve been pitched more wearable devices than in any other year in my entire career. I wanted to scream. I only have two wrists, 10 fingers (only six of which are appropriate for smart rings), two ears, a chest, neck, and face upon which to test an ever-increasing number of gadgets meant to be worn 24/7, 365 days a year.
For most of my career, I’d wholeheartedly agree that this is a rarefied problem I volunteered for and get paid to deal with. Except in the last two years, I’ve had a sinking feeling that Big Tech increasingly wants more people — perhaps everyone — to live like I do.
This dread first snuck up on me when I tested the Samsung Galaxy Ring last year. As I wrote in my review, this was not a device designed to stand on its own. While you could use it as a smartwatch alternative, it’s meant as an accessory for a Galaxy Watch. It’s a means of sucking you into Samsung’s orbit. As smart rings gained steam, an increasing number of friends, family, coworkers, peers, and readers have asked for my read on the Oura Ring. The majority were seeking something comfier and with longer battery life than a smartwatch, but blanched at the idea of giving up glanceable notifications or haptic alarms. Many gave me the stink eye when I said the Oura Ring works best in tandem with a smartwatch, not in lieu of it, for most people.
Now sprinkle the recent influx of AI hardware on top of this.
Humane’s ill-fated AI Pin was something you wore on your lapel, but couldn’t replace a phone or smartwatch. When I tested Bee, an always-listening AI wearable, I had to decide whether it took up limited wrist real estate or was pinned to my neck. I was somewhat relieved that for all its faults, Friend was something to wear around my neck, a relatively unused body part in wearable tech… so far.
It’s clear to me that in the search for what comes after the smartphone, tech companies have decided they should live on — and eventually, in — our bodies. (See: brain-computer interfaces and continuous glucose monitors.)
I wish I could write this off as my paranoia. Unfortunately, you can see signs of it in how tech executives speak about this next wave of hands-free computing.
Earlier this summer, I spoke with Sandeep Waraich, Google’s product lead for Pixel Wearables, and Rishi Chandra, Google’s VP of Fitbit and Health. Both told me in plain terms that Google envisions “the future will be a diverse set of accessories” embedded with AI. The appeal of smartwatches and headphones, they told me, was that they are existing products you already use.
Similarly, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently told Sources, “There are between 1 to 2 billion people who wear glasses daily for vision correction. Is there a world where, in five or seven years, the vast majority of those glasses are AI glasses in some capacity?” Meanwhile, Apple is also said to be pivoting toward smart glasses, and it’s no mystery what its stance on product ecosystem is. The more you buy, the better.
Add Samsung’s play with the Galaxy Ring plus whatever the heck OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Jony Ive are making, and you have compelling evidence that Big Tech’s power players are all working toward putting as many gadgets on us as they can. It’d be nice if it could be streamlined to one wearable, but the challenge is that no two bodies are ever the same. You’d never snooze with smart glasses to track sleep, smart rings are ill-advised for weight lifting, and smartwatches simply aren’t comfortable for some people.
Call me a cynic. I fully believe these companies will all tout that you’ll have a choice in which accessories you use, while also making you feel like you’re missing out if you don’t buy everything.
It’s not just Big Tech, either. A few months ago, Health Secretary RFK Jr., while speaking about continuous glucose monitors and fitness trackers, said he wants a wearable on every American in four years. Fold that in along with this push toward smartwatches, smart rings, and smart glasses? Welcome to my life, baby.
This existential crisis was brought to you by a Vergecast hotline I helped answer earlier this week. The caller asked whether they should embark on a two-smartwatch life. Their Apple Watch alone was no longer sufficient for their regimen of tracking strength training and running. To get the best possible performance, should they add a Garmin and juggle between both products?
My answer remains a visceral “Absolutely not.”
My tolerance for this multi-device hellscape is high, but it’s still a hellscape. Look at me. I live a life of permanent double watch tans, getting negged by AI necklaces, and 30-minute data review sessions every morning when I wake up and after every workout. My eyes hurt from constantly looking at smart glasses displays. (They’re rarely optimally placed!) When I wear CGMs, I end up scrutinizing the impact of every morsel of food that passes my lips. Anytime I get a notification, my body vibrates from various devices eager to let me know that a neighbor has walked past my Nest Doorbell. As I’ve written in a recent Optimizer, I have to build in detox days to ensure I use these tools, not the other way around.
If the point of all this is to make life better, then I need Big Tech to have a deep, long think about whether the problems they’re trying to solve were ever really problems to begin with. Take it from me, a wearable maximalist: I am exhausted, running out of body parts, and feeling more cyborg than human with each passing day. And if we blindly race toward a future where everyone feels like that? We’ve lost sight of why any of us ever loved technology in the first place.
Photography by Victoria Song / The Verge
