Thuy Phan/Nguoi Viet

San Dimas, Calif.– If you described Chi Huynh, 47, as a jeweler, you’d only be partially right. In addition to being the man behind Galatea Jewelry, based in San Dimas, Calif., Huynh is also one part scientist, one part inventor, and several parts poet, artist and overall Renaissance man. That would explain how this former art major took a pearl, and inserted it with a near-field communication, or NFC, chip that allows it to record messages and take photos.

Huynh calls his latest innovation “the locket of the future”. (Photo courtesy of Galatea Jewelery)

“It’s the locket of the future,” Huynh said. “In the past 100 years, you had beautiful jewelry. Now you have beautiful jewelry that can actually communicate with you. I think that’s pretty cool.”

Huynh unveiled his “Galatea Momento Pearl” recently, making it what he said is the first piece of jewelry in the world to have NFC technology embedded.

The technology itself isn’t new, but the way Huynh uses it to exist inside a pearl and to link it with an app he created is. That’s why there is a patent pending for the “Galatea Momento Pearl.”

It’s a simple but intricate process; certain metals don’t react or conduct the electricity. Through trial and error, Huynh was able to figure out what metal does work. And the highlight is that doesn’t need a battery.

Huynh holds a patent for his Galatea Momento Pearl process that allows an NFC-enabled device to be able to save phone messages and photos with a tap of the pearl. (Photo: Thuy Phan/Nguoi Viet)

“NFC is nothing more than a radio frequency signal that works by induction,” Huynh said. “You have a spring made out of copper and you put a magnet through the spring to generate electricity that powers the chip. From there, it will send out a signal that communicates with your phone and saves your messages.”

That explains the science behind the NFC technology inside the pearl, but the practical application happens in five simple steps.

First, you need to download the Galatea mobile app Huynh created specifically for his Galatea Momento Pearl. Then, when you are ready to record a voice message or take a photo, you take the pearl and tap it against an NFC-enabled phone, and the app will automatically load.

It will then prompt the user to either record a message or take a photo with the phone. The user then saves the file of the recorded message or photo, and taps the pearl again to the phone, which then saves the media to the pearl.

Huynh created an app specifically for this line of NFC-enabled pearls that is compatible with most Android phones. iPhones are currently not compatible. (Photo courtesy of Galatea Jewelery)

From there, in order for the recipients to retrieve the messages or photos, they simply tap the pearl against any NFC-enabled device and the message or photo pops up immediately.

Teresa Saldivar, 62, who owns Teresa’s Jewelers in Santa Ana and sits on the board of directors for Jewelers of America, said she read about Huynh’s pearl in a magazine and was fascinated.

“I immediately thought of a mother that is going to pass,” Saldivar said. “In my mind, she has cancer, she wants to leave something for her daughter who is about to get married, and she leaves it as a gift. I can imagine the daughter opening it up and being blown away. It’s remarkable.”

Saldivar, who has been in the jewelry business for 40 years, said she doesn’t carry any Galatea products currently but is keen to find out more about what it can do.

“I’ll be honest, I also thought it might be too ‘techy’ but the more I read about it, the more I felt it was different,” Saldivar said. “This is totally love and emotion, which is what jewelry is all about.”

NFC, or near field communication, uses induction and electricity to transmit a signal from pearl to the phone. (Photo: Thuy Phan/Nguoi Viet)

While the press for Huynh’s novel idea has been generally positive, there is one factor that comes up when the pearl is used to record someone else’s voice that must be considered: privacy.

According to Mari Frank, an attorney and privacy consultant in Laguna Niguel, California law prohibits the recording of someone else without their permission.

“Both parties must consent to being tape recorded, or it must be very transparent that they’re being recorded,” Frank said. “There’s always benefits but it could be a little invasive. Who’s to say that people will always use it for positive messages? What’s to stop a person from embedding something ‘nasty’ in the chip?”

She added, “It’s definitely creative. But be careful what you save on it. Anytime you save something that can be sensitive, photos for example, there’s always a privacy issue.”

While that possibility certainly exists, Huynh said he is confident most people will use it for positive messages.

Galatea Jewelry by artist and owner Chi Huynh, who works on his carved pearl designs. (Photo Thuy Phan/Nguoi Viet)

“If you buy this piece of jewelry and you spend money on it, I am almost certain you would use it to record positive, beautiful things,” Huynh said. “No one would use it to say, ‘I hate you.’ They would say wonderful things to remind their loved ones of their feelings. It then becomes a living diary of someone’s life, and in 50 years, the next generation can pick up the pearl, and find out all about their grandparents with just a tap. That to me is beautiful.”

Trang Diem Massie, 40, whose vows Huynh recorded as a surprise gift and test model, said she doesn’t consider privacy being an issue at all, as long as people use it for its intended purpose.

“I didn’t know this but during my wedding, Chi was up front recording it,” Massie said. “Later when he presented it as a gift, I thought it was just a pearl. When he took out his phone and showed us how it worked, and all of a sudden I heard our vows, it brought me back and I became very emotional. I’m very sentimental and it meant a lot to me.”

While Massie wears the pearl often and says it is a “conversation piece,” one thing she hasn’t been able to do is access the vows on her own phone, since it is not NFC-enabled. Currently, the technology is only compatible for Android phones with NFC-capability, meaning iPhone users can’t access the app just yet.

Huynh’s Galatea Momento pearls are mounted onto rings, earrings and necklaces with a price range that varies from $350-$5,565. (Photo courtesy of Galatea Jewelry)

“At the present time, iPhone has not made its code for NFC available for developers,” said Barbara Moss, Galatea’s director of marketing. “We are hoping Apple does allow this in the months to come.”

While the pearl itself does not do the actual recording, it does serve as the “hard drive” to saving the data recorded on the Galatea app, which is backed up by the cloud.

If you were to lose your phone or your pearl, Huynh said he can retrieve the data since it is stored in the cloud.

While messages can be as long as you want, Moss said they recommend 2-3 minute messages since the company offers 25 megabytes for free.

“A user can record unlimited messages if they want, but they will simply have to pay more for a storge fee, similiar to Dropbox,” Moss said. “But we haven’t had customers who needed to do that.”

Huynh comes from a long line of jewelers, including his father Tong Huynh, who was well respected in Soc Trang. Huynh was unsure he would follow in his footsteps but opened his own shop in 1994 in San Dimas.

His work with carving pearls and embedding them with gemstones was so successful that he went back to his hometown of Soc Trang, Vietnam, to open up a factory with 150 employees to keep up with the demand for his jewelry.

Huynh opened up a pearl carving factory in Soc Trang, Vietnam, to meet the demands for his signature carved pearls. (Photo courtesy of Galatea)

“I spent a year and a half training the locals on how to carve the pearls, and now they’re even better than I am,” Huynh said. “But I always do the first one to show them how it’s done.”

While this Momento Pearl is innovative in a lot of ways, it’s not his first creation. In 2005, Huynh trademarked the “Galatea Pearl,” which is a pearl cultured using a colored stone bead. The pearl grows around the stone and is then carved to reveal its colorful interior.

In addition to creating the NFC enabled pearl, Huynh was the first to embed colored stones and diamonds in an oyster and have the pearl grow around it. (Photo courtesy of Galatea)

“To me, I never really intended to make anything special,” Huynh said. “It was always a process of playing. And it was a process of being fascinated by different things, and you just have to let it sit. And one day, it’ll connect.”

The NFC-powered Galatea Momento Pearl can cost anywhere from $350 to $5,565, depending on how big and how rare the pearl is. Huynh mounts them on earrings, necklaces and even rings.

“It’s not that chip that’s expensive,” Huynh said. “It’s the whole process of producing and carving the pearl that costs money.”

To date, Galatea has sold more than 4,500 units since they hit the market in January. With the tech-obsessed society that we live in today, Huynh is convinced this is the best time for his NFC-powered pearl.

“People sleep with their phones,” Huynh said. “We can’t part with it. I think in the future, every piece of jewelry you own will be able to communicate. I think that’s pretty radical.”

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