First Blockchain-Smartphone HTC Exodus 1 only in Bitcoin and Ethereum payable
The Taiwanese electronics giant HTC has won the race for the first blockchain-based smartphone against Sirin Labs. On 23 October, HTC officially announced the launch of its HTC Exodus 1. Remarkably, the Blockchain smartphone will only be available in Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Consumers can purchase the HTC Exodus 1 at a fixed price of 0.15 Bitcoin (BTC) or 4.78 Ethereum (ETH). This is a fixed price which (probably) will not be adjusted. At the current Bitcoin rate, the smartphone costs the equivalent of around USD 970 for purchases with BTC and USD 960 for purchases with Ethereum. If the price of BTC should rise significantly, for example to USD 10,000, the value of Exodus 1 could also rise significantly to USD 1,500.
With respect to the company’s decision to sell the device exclusively in BTC and ETH at a fixed price, Phil Chen, head of HTC’s Blockchain Initiative, the SCMP portal, said that the company only intends to sell the device to the core audience, which is the global Blockchain community:
If we sell it only in crypto and are the first to do so, we bring it directly to the core audience and those who want this device – the blockchain community. It reflects our belief in crypto currencies – in fact we had to redesign and overcome many processes internally and find new distributors to achieve the goal of only accepting crypto currencies as a form of payment.
What can the HTC Exodus do 1?
The main feature of Exodus 1 is its safety. It is designed to work as a hardware crypto currency wallet. One of the most important functions of the smartphone is therefore the Zion Wallet, which makes it possible to use the phone as a secure hardware Wallet and execute functions that separate the security operation from the rest of the Android operating system. HTC calls this “TrustZone”. HTC Decentralized Chief Officer Phil Chen, Exodus Project Leader, describes the Trust Zone as a “micro-operating system” that runs alongside Android and provides hackers with an additional layer of security to struggle with when the phone is infected with malware.
The Zion wallet will initially support Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum and some other ERC20 tokens.
