Russian Railways will purchase Russian smartphones for all conductors. This could cost over 600 million rubles by the end of the year.

The company purchased its first batch of 7 domestically produced devices at the end of last year, and will purchase another 9 in 2024. write "Vedomosti".

Russian Railways is not disclosing the specific devices it is purchasing. The purchase price is also confidential, but according to the publication, it plans to spend over 600 million rubles on smartphones by the end of the year. The company currently employs approximately 28 conductors.

A source familiar with the procurement terms told the publication that the primary purchases will be R570E smartphones with the Aurora OS, manufactured by Fplus Holding. The listed price for the device is 47,990 rubles. This smartphone is not listed on the Fplus website.

Last year, Russian Railways announced it would migrate its employees' work devices to the Aurora operating system, which is officially considered Russian. Its development has been underway since 2016, based on the Finnish Sailfish OS. Aurora OS was developed by Open Mobile Platform, a company 99,9% owned by the state-owned operator Rostelecom.

Plans were previously announced to purchase 1,1 million tablets with the Aurora OS for four ministries—the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the Ministry of Emergency Situations. Experts noted that the allocated amount could have been used to purchase twice as many Chinese tablets.