By
Mayowa Adebajo
March 12th, 2024
The Finney smartphone that is fighting for the title of the first “blockchain phone” will be launched in November 2018. It claims to satisfy all the demands of the crypto market and maintain the incredible level of security for the reasonable price.
The smartphone market is relatively young: the first device of this kind became available for the consumers in 1994. The brainchild of IBM called Simon Personal Communicator had a battery that lasted for about an hour and could be used to send emails and faxes. That was a kind of revolution for the mid-90s – but the race for the customers’ satisfaction has turned smartphones in the equivalent of phone, PC, media center and camera wrapped into a hand-size device.
The new challenge for the tech giants is the rise of the crypto market. More and more people own cryptocurrency – and they want the digital money to be ready at hand at the time of their mass adoption. These requests have been heard: Sirin Labs, an Israel-based company working in the sphere of secure open source consumer electronics, announced the cryptocurrency-powered phone on the 11th of July.
The new device called Finney is expected to combine the incredible level of security with powerful computing software suitable for the blockchain era. The naming is a well-deserved tribute to Hal Finney, computer scientist and early crypto supporter who received the first Bitcoin transaction. The price of the phone is comparable with the cost of popular flagmans: $1,000.
However, there is a specific issue about the price: even though it is fixed in the U.S. dollars, Sirin Labs accepts the payments only in its native SRN token. The launch of the Finney smartphone is scheduled for November 2018, but the pre-order is already open. There is also a chance to save some money: the pre-order discount is 10%.
Finney is packed with crypto features, but it still has a lot in common with popular smartphones. The new device is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 mobile platform: the one used by Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+. 128GB storage memory and 6GB RAM seem to be enough for the comfortable usage. The battery may become a weak point: it is rather average at 3,280mAh.
The technology specs of the new device have a lot in common with Solarin, the previous smartphone developed by Sirin Labs. However, the hardware seems to be the only point of contact between the two smartphones and there is a reasonable explanation for this fact. Solarin introduced a number of innovative technological solutions but the price of $14,000 did not allow it to conquer the market.
Sirin Labs have learnt the lesson and created a device which is more likely to become popular. One of the steps towards creating a mass-market product became the partnership with Foxconn, the company which manufactures devices for Apple, Nokia, BlackBerry, and Xiaomi.
One of the most attractive technological solutions implemented in Finney is its second touchscreen which is used to facilitate cryptocurrency transactions. The software developers of Sirin Labs kept the pace with the engineers and also introduced a number of notable solutions. Lots of them relate to the security issues, but one innovation is opening a new sphere for the smartphone services.
Finney features Token Conversion Service that can instantly convert SRN token to other digital assets. That sounds like a big achievement, but it hides a little disappointment for the Bitcoin enthusiasts: the default currency of Finney is SRN token.
The Finney smartphone is not going to replace the crypto wallets. Even though it claims to be extremely secure, its developers suppose users estimate the daily amount of their crypto spending and transfer them to Finney before using it for shopping.
Sirin Labs has done its best to promote Finney: incredible security, great tech specs, and the price which is 14 times less than the one of its previous smartphone. The company has one more argument for those who are still in doubt: the Finney smartphone is approved by the world football superstar Lionel Messi.