Electroneum Launches Crypto-mining Smartphone At MWC

Electroneum, a UK-based cryptocurrency startup has now officially launched a cryptocurrency smartphone.

While the company is not the first to launch a cryptocurrency-enabled smartphone, it is, however, the first to launch the first mobile phone that allows the users to mine cryptocurrency and eventually, gain back the cost of the phone – technically, the phone would pay you back for buying it. Sounds pretty neat, doesn’t it?

You don’t have to worry about not knowing the minute details of cryptocurrency – the Electroneum app aims to simplify the process and doesn’t require a lot of knowledge, cryptocurrency-wise.

The phone, dubbed the M1, costs $80 and has 4G and dual-sim capabilities. It runs Android 8.1 Go out of the box and has 8GB of internal storage expandable to up to 32GB, a 5MP rear camera and a 2MP selfie snapper with a battery of 1600mAh.

While it sounds like a phone we might not be interested in nowadays specs-wise, giving the phone high-end specs was not what Electroneum was interested in – what makes this phone unlike others is the fact that it comes with Electoneum’s mobile mining app: an a new cloud mining technology that allows the users to earn ETN via the app, even when they don’t have internet access.

You might be wondering how is that possible considering bitcoin for example, gobbles up electricity like it’s its job?

Well, Electroneum says that the mining is not, technically speaking, mining – not like ethereum or bitcoin. Electroneum actually benefits from what it’s called ‘mining simulation’ where small amounts of ETN are airdropped into the wallets of the users.

“With our experience in tech, we were able to gather a world-class team consisting of telecommunications, manufacturing, emerging area mobile-operators, product design and marketing specialists, all helping to make this utopian vision of ours a reality.

Without the broad range of talent and expertise, we could never have imagined the possibility of making a product of this calibre accessible for anyone in the world, and we are extremely proud of the result”

Richard Ells, Electroneum CEO and founder

You’ll only need to do some simple interactions to start mining over the app and once these interactions are complete, the mining can then continue offline.

Overall, it means that you’ll be able to recover the cost of the phone in around 24 months, since there’s around $3 a month in ETN being distributed around.

All in all, the phone sounds like a great deal but, reportedly, Electroneum has all ready shipped out its entire M1 batch of 500 units, so if you planned to grab one, you might have to wait for a while longer.