After months of working tirelessly, Sirin Labs announced this week the piece of news that blockchain and tech geeks have been waiting for a long time: one of the first blockchain phones of the planet will be available on the market this month. The device is named “Finney.”
The Finney smartphone features a cold storage wallet, a unique operating system, and the Safe Screen feature, which is a secret screen that will surprise more than one. The developers and creators of the device have stated that its intention is to “bridge the gap between mass adoptions of blockchain technology.”
Meet the Sirin OS
The Sirin OS is the one in charge of powering the phone. It was designed by the company itself and is based on Android, but with more than a few tweaks to make it extra secure. The smartphone comes with a Cybersecurity Suite installed: among its offerings, this is the Intrusion Prevention System, which is a physical security switch that is based on the person’s behavior and has biometric and lock pattern authentication as well. It is yet to be determined the effectiveness of those functions in real-life, but Finney’s features have raised eyebrows around the industry.
The phone has exciting features and technical specifications that may make it more palatable and attractive to the average person in need of a smartphone with excellent performance and capabilities. For instance, it has a 12 MPX primary camera, a wide-angle front camera of 8 MPX, 128 GB of internal storage, and 6 GB of RAM. The screen is 6 inches (18:9.)
The name “Finney” comes from the second person in the world to ever use Bitcoin, named Hal Finney. While the official launch date has not been yet published, we do know, thanks to the roadmap found on Sirin Labs page, that it will be sometime in the month of December.
How to Acquire the Phone
The price of the device will be $999. It will be found in brick-and-mortar stores, the first of which is under construction in London, England. Other countries hosting the mentioned establishment will be Germany, Turkey, Israel, Japan, the United States, South Korea, Kazakhstan, and Vietnam. And although people from Africa, Australia, or South America will be able to order the smartphone online, it does not look that there will be physical stores available for people to directly buy it, or at least, information is not clear.
There will be a 10 percent discount for people that preorder the phone, which will be obtainable by paying in SRN tokens. At the moment of writing this piece, each SRN token was worth $0.18, which happens to be a nearly 40 percent increase in the last day. And since the token is ERC20 standard, people can store them with ease in their Ethereum wallets.
The news about the phone launch appears to have positively affected its price in the crypto market. Whether or not Finney is the first blockchain phone ever made is up for debate and remains to be seen, given that HTC’s Exodus 1 will most likely be shipped in December.
By Andres Chavez
