One, two, three, four – I declare a blockchain smartphone war.
Sirin Labs has announced that its crowdfunded blockchain smartphone, the FINNEY, will be released this November. Last year, the company raised[1] $157.8 million in its ICO, and the hype has been growing ever since.
HTC is also releasing a blockchain phone, the Exodus[2], later this year.
Both phones have hardware[3] wallets, and both Sirin and HTC claim their products will allow easy conversion and trading between coins. Both companies have had their share of economic failures and struggles to stay afloat. Both claim to be some version of "the first" blockchain smartphone.
However, while HTC has yet to release specs for the Exodus, available information suggests the phones will have significant differences. Whereas the Exodus will focus on data privacy, security, and interoperability between blockchains, the FINNEY is focused mostly on cryptocurrency and related security, and operates on its own blockchain – or maybe its own tangle (more on that below).
In an April post on Medium[4], Sirin Labs described its purpose, target market, and product. It laid out statistics about the low use of cryptocurrency among Americans and the high rate of smartphone ownership. Sirin figured that if it created a crypto-compatible, easy-to-use smartphone, it could spur mainstream adoption of blockchain technology. HTC's Exodus, on the other hand, seems less singularly focused on crypto.
The phone will run on SIRIN OS[5], an open-source operating system built on top of Android. It is intended to allow P2P cryptocurrency transactions, resource sharing, and easy access to blockchain-based services, and to make "fee-less and quantum-proof transactions of cryptocurrencies (without involvement of SIRIN LABS)." It should be noted, however, that at the time of publication, ETHNews
