Honor Releases First Snapdragon Smartphone With Digital Yuan Wallet
Chinese smartphone brand Honor released the first Snapdragon-powered handset to support the digital yuan, marking a milestone in the People’s Bank of China’s goal to develop hardware for the digital currency.
The Magic 3 will support a digital yuan hardware wallet, and is built on Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon chip, the 888, Honor CEO George Zhao said during the release event yesterday.
In its latest white paper, the central bank said that, unlike so-called soft wallets such as apps, hardware wallets come with hardware-level security.
The PBoC has been pushing for new hardware applications of the digital yuan; tech companies and banks have come up with new devices, including ATMs and a hardware wallet on a walking cane.
Honor was Huawei’s budget smartphone brand until November 2020, when the Shenzhen giant sold it to avoid U.S. sanctions.