Swiss-based Sirin Labs announced its blockchain powered handset Finney will hit the markets later this year in November. While Sirin Labs isn't a fresh face to the smartphone space, the company has already launched two expensive handsets over the past couple of years.
The Finney is named after Bitcoin pioneer Hal Finney, and is described as a "state of the art mobile device" for the "blockchain era.”
As you can see in the image, Finney has appealing looks but borrows design similar to its predecessors with one notable difference being the rear portion of the phone can slide up to popup a second display. Called as Safe Screen, it runs its own software and will be strictly used for crypto transactions.
The Safe Screen also lets users check where their coinage is being sent before they pay. The slider also activates the cold storage wallet that is designed to hold a significant number of different cryptocurrencies.
The Finney will have a 6-inch 18:9 display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor, 6GB RAM, and 128GB of internal storage that can be expanded via microSD card. It will have a 12MP rear camera, 8MP front-facing camera, 3,280mAh battery, and fingerprint reader. While the mentioned specs speaks itself for a pretty standard smartphone for 2018, but what distinguishes Finney from others is its OS and support of blockchain.
According to Sirin Labs, Finney devices will form "an independent blockchain network, a distributed ledger both scalable and lightweight, powered by a fee-less DLC and SIRIN LABS’ security ecosystem".
And to make this feasible, Finney will run on Sirin OS, which is designed to support blockchain apps, a crypto wallet, secure exchanges, and more.
Another noteworthy feature in Finney is Token Conversion Service (TCS), which acts as a way to overcome the Balkanised nature of cryptocurrencies. Since so many bitcoins are launched on a regular basis, it gets difficult for users to know where to put trust while place money. TCS, however, acts as a form of automatic broker, exchanging your SRN coins into the tokens necessary to carry out a specific purchase.
While it’s still uncertain whether such a device will create a buzz, the demand however, could increase, as Sirin Labs has signed up Lionel Messi as a pitch person at the end of 2017. The global soccer superstar will lend his name and face to the phone, same as he does for companies like Adidas, Gatorade, Pepsi, Ooredoo, Huawei, Hawkers, Tata Motors and... Mastercard.
