Sirin Labs to begin shipping $999 blockchain phone in December

Sirin Labs has updated on its highly-anticipated blockchain phone, Finney, with orders expected to start shipping out at the end of December.

The final design was unveiled at an event in Barcelona on Thursday. The phone can be pre-ordered for $999, but only if customers hold Sirin’s SRN token.

The company raised over $157 million during its initial coin offering early in 2018, much of which was designated to be spent on the production of the phone.

While a specific date for release wasn’t given, Nimrod May, the company’s CMO, said that it would start shipping between 15th-25th December.

May also had high hopes in terms of sales projections, stating that he was “pretty confident that we’ll pass 100,000 [sales] in the first year.”

Finney’s unique selling point is the enhanced security aspects. As the phone is designed to store cryptocurrency, security is key. There will be application of artificial intelligence to intrusion detection. The operating system will also be a modified version of Android’s OS, entitled SirinOS.

Another security aspect is the cold wallet feature of the phone. It will have a separate processor and users will be able to interact with the wallet on a second screen.

One potential issue is that it was announced at the start of the year at the height of the ICO and dapp hype cycle, meaning that it may be tough to get users onboard to download decentralised applications from the native app store. May said that the venture will try to drive the traffic in downloads by “incentivising the user with airdrops”.

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