Pundi Labs' first blockchain smartphone BOB is available for pre-order at 539 dollars. Supposedly there's a limited supply of 5000 phones. BOB stands for Blok-on-Blok, referring to the customization options and the complete focus on blockchain technology. Blockchain smartphone BOB is available for pre-order on the FunctionX website.
Consumers can modify the phone to their needs easily. Every phone comes with a MOD Assembly Kit. This allows them to build their own personalized blockchain phone. The kit contains a motherboard, display screen, camera, audio speaker parts, buttons and aesthetic thingies.
BOB is completely open source, both its hardware and its software. This also means that other companies, like Samsung, HTC, LG are free to use the Function X blockchain to build their own phones.
Once BOB is shipped, Function X OS and the custom Android OS will be released as open-source software. Developers will be free to create and build their own apps, or a custom blockchain OS, while running it on BOB hardware.
The phone can work entirely on the blockchain services of Function X. Each BOB is a node in the network. Therefore it's possible that users don't need a mobile phone operator to make a call. However, BOB also supports a classic Android mode. This way people can still place phone calls and use apps the way they've been doing for the past decade.
Pundi Labs is one of the first companies to combine mobile phones with blockchain technology. It’s definitely the first to offer phone calls over a blockchain network. From that perspective BOB is setting an example for companies like Samsung, LG and HTC. These companies are already getting into the blockchain space, with Samsung spearheading the industry.
Samsung launched the Galaxy S10, which is a crypto-friendly smartphone. On top of that the company worked together with South Korean internet company Kakao. They’ve launched a blockchain-friendly phone called Klaytn Phone. At the same time HTC has the Exodus 1 and Exodus S1, which can run a Bitcoin node.
For BOB to place phone calls over blockchain will require broader adoption of the technology. The potential however, is enormous. China Telecom already painted this picture in a recently published a whitepaper. They foresee that every smartphone will be a node in a network, connecting services and people directly.
