How Sirin Labs’ Blockchain Phone Stacks Up to The Samsung Galaxy S9

Sirin Labs just recently announced the specs on its latest Finney phone , a mobile device that’s mostly powered by the blockchain the company created in its ICO.

Aside from the injection of blockchain-based software into its Sirin OS—a souped-up version of Android 8.1 that runs decentralized apps—it also features a cold storage cryptocurrency wallet that supports all major coins plus Sirin’s token, SRN.

The specifications announced in 2017 were promising, but the company ultimately decided to take the overkill down a notch and release a phone that could go toe-to-toe with most of the flagships available right now. To provide a bit of perspective on what these specs look like, let’s compare the blockchain phone to Samsung’s top of the line—the Galaxy S9 and S9+.

Most mobile users don’t like having to buy a microSD card to store stuff on their phones. There’s also the fact that some app data cannot be transferred to SD unless one makes risky modifications to the device.

For this reason, adequate storage space is probably one of the biggest priorities for people who want a future-proof phone capable of withstanding the way that developers bloat their apps these days.

The Finney gives its users a generous 128 GB of storage out of the box, offering twice as much as Samsung’s 64 GB on both its S9 and S9+. If anyone wants to extend that storage, there’s no word on whether the Finney has a microSD slot. The newest Galaxy phones will be extendable to 400GB.

And of course, if you want to run several apps you store on your phone simultaneously, you’ll need a healthy dose of RAM. The Finney offers 6 GB of RAM, which is matched by the Samsung (KS:005930) Galaxy S9+. The S9 offers only 4 GB.

For selfie aficionados, nothing could be more important than the quality of the lens on a phone.

The Finney presents itself with an 8 MP front-facing camera, a measure that is equaled by both the Samsung S9 and S9+. As for the rear camera, the blockchain phone offers a 12 MP piece, which is also matched up by the S9 and S9+.

When it comes to its display, however, the Finney is slightly underwhelming. It packs a 6.2-inch display with an FHD+ 1080p resolution on an 18:9 aspect ratio. Samsung’s Galaxy S9 might not be as large (5.8 inches), but it sports a 1440p resolution on an aspect ratio of 18:9.

The S9 plus takes this a bit further by pushing the screen size to 6.2 inches, matching the Finney while surpassing its image quality.

It’s easy to argue that the difference between 1080p and 1440p isn’t that striking in small devices, but at a premium price of around $999 for the Finney, buyers looking for a mainstream phone might not want the compromise in quality. Then again, Sirin Labs is targeting an audience of cybersecurity, cryptocurrency, and blockchain enthusiasts who have a different set of priorities.

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The chip powering a phone is its central nervous system. If it underperforms at all, you’ll see apps freezing and opening slowly. Horsepower is everything here, and the CPU is the centerpiece of the show.

The Finney, as well as both Samsung Galaxy S9 versions, include a Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) 845 chipset, which boasts a Kryo 385 octa-core CPU with 2.8 GHz of clock speed per core. Its LTE modem can download at 1.2 Gbps, and all of the other specifications are just what you’d expect from an SoC announced a few months ago.

And what kind of battery can we expect to see powering these behemoths?

Here, again, the Finney’s results match up with the Samsung Galaxy S9, with a 3000 mAh battery. However, the Galaxy S9+ adds another 500 mAh on top of that, owing to its larger screen and its snappier specs.

Because the screen is one of the biggest drains on a phone’s battery, we should be comparing the Finney to the S9+, both of which have the same size screen. However, we’re not going to do that, since the S9+ has a much higher pixel density, making it drain its battery far more than the Finney.

While the Finney comes out slightly under the S9 in terms of raw numbers, its generous storage and highly secure and reputable operating system put it in the same weight class as all the heavy hitters released thus far. The people targeted by Sirin Labs aren’t impressed by selfie cameras anyway, and even in this department, the Finney packs a punch worthy of sharing the throne with the S9.

Its pricing at $999 comes just around what you’d expect an S9+ for, and both phones fail to disappoint at this particular range.