Disclaimer – I have no connection with any of the companies or organizations mentioned here – but I thought that this information would be of interest to this community.
There are two documents on the web that describe a ‘teardown’ of the SCiO instrument. One is a commercial venture, and most of the information is hidden (http://www.systemplus.fr/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/SP17304_SCIO_Spectrometer_Sample_System_Plus_Consulting.pdf).
But the second is open access, and you can see all the information (https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/scio-pocket-molecular-scanner-teardown-).
It appears that the heart of the device is a 4x3 filter array over a CMOS sensor. The apparent spectral range could be ~740nm to ~900nm. The shortwave limit would be defined by a red filter, and the longwave limit by the performance of a front illuminated Si-based sensor. That would mean that the ‘resolution’ would be ~13nm. This assumes that the individual filters are simple filters and not linear variable filters.
It’s worth noting that this is the ‘third overtone’ region, where spectra appear to be less complicated, and band shapes are simpler. See, for instance, the chapter by Charles E. Miller in ‘Near-Infrared Technology: Applications in the Agricultural and Food Industries’, Phil Williams and Karl Norris, Editors, American Association of Cereal Chemists, 2nd Edition, 2001. So the information content is less than you would get in the 1 – 1.7µm region, and much less than you would achieve at longer wavelengths than that (e.g., to 2.5 µm).
(Having said that, it’s also worth noting that a refinery analyzer operating in the Si-detector region has been on the market for many years and is widely successful (PIONIR® 1024X™ from AIT: http://www.aitanalyzers.com/process-analyzer-product.php?id=10). However, that design is obviously considerably more sophisticated, and higher spectral resolution, that the SCiO product, and it’s targeted at one particular industry and class of products.)