Vivo's first folding screen mobile phone vivo X Fold claims to be equipped with Snapdragon 8 Gen1 SPU custom flagship chip, and the standard Snapdragon 8 has an additional "SPU", that is, a security processing unit, which can provide security solutions based on the underlying hardware. Today, let's briefly talk about the built-in security chip of the mobile phone.
Before the popularity of mobile payment, mobile phone security was not too much concern, setting a lock screen password, can hide private apps and files is enough. With the increasing demand for payment security and personal privacy, In 2016, Gionee first proposed the concept of a built-in security chip.
The Gionee M6, which was listed that year, debuted a built-in security chip, and Gionee also developed a private space 2.0 APP for this chip. Call logs, contacts, text messages, pictures, files, etc. added to this APP will be encrypted by the security chip. The decoding of these encrypted files must be carried out by a security chip that encrypts them, and the security encryption chip of each mobile phone is unique, and a chip only corresponds to one mobile phone (that is, it is bound to the CPU number).
In other words, even if someone copies the encrypted files in M6 to a PC, or copies them to another M6 mobile phone, even if they can open it through profiteering, all they see is a bunch of garbled code.
In 2017, Gionee released the M7 mobile phone with a built-in dual security chip, in addition to the security encryption chip, it also added a "payment security encryption chip". At that time, the official payment security encryption chip passed the testing and certification of authoritative institutions, EAL6+ (China Information Security Certification Center), UnionPay, and CICC Guosheng, providing a safe operating environment and storage environment for payment information processing.
After Gionee, 360 has also launched mobile phones with built-in security chips.
In 2022, the concept of security chips returns again, and Honor's new Magic4 series focuses on the privacy protection mechanism of "two locks and one core", that is, to provide users with privacy protection solutions through independent security chips and dual TEE security systems.
It is reported that the magic4 series of independent chips communicate directly with the main chip, and the relevant password data is directly stored in it. Similar to the physical vault, the internal data of this independent chip cannot be cracked externally, and the encryption and decryption process is also completed inside the chip, which is fundamentally different from software encryption.
So, why in addition to the Honor Magic4 series, in recent years, few mobile phone manufacturers have taken security chips as the main selling point?
The reason is that at the level of the mobile phone SoC mobile platform, the underlying hardware encryption scheme has been done.
Taking Qualcomm as an example, as early as the Snapdragon 835 era, the Haven security platform that integrates hardware, software and biometric technology was added to the SoC. To snapdragon 845, on the basis of the Haven security platform, a separate "SPU" unit was introduced to ensure the security of mobile payments.
At this point, the SPU security processing unit has become the standard of the Snapdragon mobile platform in the past, and in the Snapdragon 865 period, this SPU can provide multiple protections for camera security, content, storage, passwords, access and so on. To the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen1, it supports vault-level security features, the first time to use a dedicated trust management engine (Trust Management Engine), the world's first to comply with the AndroidReadySE standard (for digital car keys, driver's licenses, etc.), SPU even supports integrated SIM card (iSIM).
Vivo this time the main Snapdragon 8 Gen1 SPU custom flagship chip, the subtext is that other brands of mobile phones even if equipped with Snapdragon 8 Gen1, its standard SPU is in a state of shielding or not enabled.
Vivo X Fold can be used to further enhance the security of existing services through the built-in security processing unit combined with the independent OS. For example, vivo has developed a password safe function based on SPU customization, using a hardware-protected key in the SPU to encrypt the user password. Password safe covers online shopping, office, entertainment and other applications, and all passwords that enable password autofill can be guarded by SPU-level passwords.
Vivo X Fold also combines the hardware capabilities of the SPU security processing unit to build a "weaving network" on the bottom layer of the software to comprehensively improve the security and privacy protection capabilities. It is spread throughout every operation of the device, from the chip, core, framework and application level, covering the operation security of the mobile phone in an all-round way.
It is estimated that after vivo, more mobile phone manufacturers will also strengthen the development of SPU units integrated in the Snapdragon mobile platform in the future, so let's wait and see.