Hardware Is Hard: Two Blockchain Devices Win Plaudits at CES 2020

CES visitors check out IoTeX's camera and Pundi X's phone in the Innovation Awards section.

The United Arab Emirates blocks VoIP, but Han said he was able to get past it with his BOB phone on a visit there.

The phone runs on Pundi X's own f(x) blockchain.

The BOB phone is able to switch back and forth between Android mode and an Android fork built for blockchain usage that's ready to support dapps.

The Sirin Labs phone supported dapps, but it did not run on an operating system designed around blockchain.

Han said the aim for Pundi X is to create a third operating system, one that other telephone companies will build phones for.

Pundi X raised $30.5 million in a 2017 ICO, according to Binance, which has been used to build and deploy XPOS. Its phone, BOB, is available now on Indiegogo for pre-order as low as $554. Han expects the phone to ship this year.

Ucam.Similarly, "Internet of Trusted Things" startup IoTeX was showing off its Ucam device, a home security camera that shares footage to the cloud, but it isn't actually branded as IoTeX."Our company is a blockchain platform, and we are working with other IoT and hardware manufacturing companies to make private and secure IoT devices," IoTeX's Dorothy Ko explained.

The phone will come in a giant box and require some assembly by users, in order to open up the option of modularity to the device.

The showcased BOB in the image above isn't really the phone design.