mazon’s Ring has decided to cure the smart home’s primary phobia—the prospect of spending the night on your own doormat because a battery gave up the ghost. According to Ring founder and chief inventor Jamie Siminoff, while nearly everything in our lives is digital, we still cling to physical metal keys precisely because dead electronics mean a lockout.
To bypass this, the company is introducing its first-ever smart lock, bringing an unexpected piece of mechanics into the digital ecosystem. Instead of relying solely on an app, a fingerprint, or a hidden physical key, the device features a built-in manual generator. Ring’s answer is a "power dial," a hand-crank mechanism tucked into the housing that can be used to put enough juice into the battery to revive the lock when things go dark.
How Much Cranking and How It Works
Ring's answer is a "power dial," a hand-crank generator that can be used to put enough juice into the battery to revive the lock.
This tempting idea of turning a handle instead of calling a locksmith still has one murky detail. As Jamie Siminoff stated, the dial needs to be turned "a few times" to charge the battery enough for the lock to operate. Just how many times "a few" translates to for a freezing apartment owner standing on a dark landing is something the manufacturer leaves conveniently vague.
Inside the smart home ecosystem, the device behaves predictably for Amazon hardware. The Ring Smart Lock connects over Amazon’s Sidewalk Internet of Things network rather than Wi-Fi and links directly into the company’s existing app and the Amazon Alexa ecosystem. In our view, this integration means the lock will slide neatly into the security cameras and video doorbells you likely already have mounted by the front door.
Should You Wait to Buy One
There is no need to drop everything and sprint to the store just yet. As the company announced, the new lock is slated to go on sale in the US sometime in early 2027 at an as-yet-unannounced price. Furthermore, that timeline might stretch even longer. At the time of writing, Amazon was still awaiting clearance from the US Federal Communications Commission.
Ring is offering an ingenious mechanical crutch for the exact moment digital convenience fails in the worst possible way. Whether this hand-crank proves genuinely useful in the real world or remains a neat conversation piece, we will find out closer to the 2027 launch when the device finally lands on real doorsteps.