The blockchain smartphone wars

For those who haven't heard, a new blockchain phone is on the horizon. Blockchain smartphones are starting to become a thing.

Solarin's Finney

Although announced almost half a year ago, the need to revisit the Finney smartphone promise is becoming more important by the day because blockchain smartphones are starting to become a thing with SIKURPhone announced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain a few days ago and the BitVault® smartphone already being rolled out.

[The Finney: Image Source]

Sirin Labs wants to produce FINNEY [named after Hal Finney, one of the first bitcoin pioneers], the world's first powered blockchain phone.

Sirin Labs is the company that produced and released the $16,000+ Solarin smartphone

Why Finney?

Smartphones cannot securely hold cryto assets securely. They (smartphones) are generally speaking very insecure devices open to malware or keyloggers because these smartphone OS focus more on user experience than on security.

Enter blockchain smartphones -The Finney. Finney wants to be the first smartphone capable of holding cryto assets securely. Finney now has some serious competition with BitVault® and SIKURphone hot on it's tail.

Features

Finney smartphones will have a 5.2-inch QHD display with 256GB of internal memory and 8GB RAM. It will sport a 12MP front facing shooter and a 16MP back camera. Processor details are not yet known but with a price tag of around $1000, we should expect nothing less than Snapdragon 835.

Finney will come preloaded with mobile Ethereum client, status. This move is to ensure that Finney users enjoy a seamless use of Finney and Status tokens.

Status is an open source client for Android and iOS that uses the Ethereum platform to provide a set of decentralized applications in a cohesive ecosystem.

This essentially means that Finney will come with end to end message encryption, smart contracts, digital currencies etc already preinstalled in it.

According to Sirin, all Finney devices will form an independent network powered by IOTA's blockless Tangle technology. Tangle varies with blockchain in the way it works Read more about IOTA's Tangle here.

The network on IOTA will operate without centralized backbones or mining centers, using the SRN token as its default currency. The new Sirin line up of blockchain devices will run on a Sirin OS that is said to be Android like and opensource specially designed to support blockchain apps like crypto wallets and secure exchange access.

---

Will Finney win out in the end?

Finney has plans of creating an ecosystem though with plans for a Finney PC already in the works too.

Whether Finney will win the blockchain smartphone wars about to begin is still left to be seen. There's no working product yet so we can onky hope that they can deliver what they promise unlike Bitvault and SIKURphone which both are working products.

The crypto space is still virgin territory with much to be explored. What blockchains and blockchain related tech that will win out in the end is left to be seen as the space evolves. We'll keep an eye on this new blockchain smartphone section. It'll certainly be fun to watch as the space matures.

---

THANK YOU FOR READING