Rumor: Huawei is working on ‘blockchain smartphone’

Smartphone maker Huawei has talked to Sirin Labs, the company behind the ‘blockchain smartphone’ Finney. According to financial news agency Bloomberg, Huawei is working on smartphones that are focused on blockchain applications.

Huawei and Sirin Labs confirm in a Bloomberg article that they are in talks, but do not say what it is about. The financial news agency says it has heard from anonymous sources that Huawei wants to build a smartphone with software from Sirin Labs.

Sirin Labs wants to release the Finney itself this year. The smartphone, named after crypto expert Hal Finney, includes a built-in hardware wallet, where users can store tokens. The phone also has support for sharing resources via p2p. The Finney also has a security switch for token security and the ability for three-factor authentication via biometrics, a pattern and ‘behaviour’, although it is unclear exactly how that works. Presumably, the software looks for intruder signals, such as attempts to install APKs or downgrade the baseband, or the arrival of suspicious messages.

Sirin Labs has published the roadmap and features of its Sirin OS in a whitepaper. It would not be the first time that Huawei has integrated technology from another company into its smartphones. The Knuckle Touch feature, which has been in high-end models for several years now, comes from start-up Qeexo.