HTC Exodus 1s: New Affordable Blockchain Phone on the Block

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HTC released the Exodus 1s on October 19, 2019, during the Lightning Conference at Berlin, Germany. The Exodus 1s is the cheaper version of their first blockchain phone released last year. HTC’s Exodus 1s is priced at $244.

The HTC Downfall

HTC lost its market friction for years that led them to sack 3,500 of its employees in 2018. HTC offloaded its first 2,000 engineers to Google. The Taiwanese tech company and Google completed $1.1B deal during January of 2018. After this, the Taiwanese company laid off 1,500 more of its employees the same year to re-allocate expenses.

Google boosted its smartphone development team with the engineers that HTC offloaded. They worked on Google’s Pixel hardware in 2018. Google has expanded its engineering bases too since most of HTC engineers were based in Taipei and Taiwan.

HTC decided to lay-low on the smartphone scene after their deal with Google. Just during this October of 2019, new HTC CEO Yves Maitre who replaced the retired CEO Cher Wang announced that HTC is already focusing on the innovation of virtual reality.

Maitre also admitted that “people like Apple… Samsung and… Huawei has done an incredible job investing in their hardware.” The Big Taiwan technology brand is steering their company in a different direction towards AI and cryptocurrency technology.

 

Release Of The Cheapest Blockchain Phone

HTC released the newest and cheaper version of their blockchain phone, the Exodus 1s.
Photo by Clifford Photography on Unsplash

HTC released its first blockchain phone, the Exodus 1, in 2018. The company initially sold the Exodus 1 through cryptocurrency only. HTC’s first blockchain phone ever peaked the price of 0.15 bitcoins or 4.78 tokens equivalent to almost $1,000. The market received Exodus 1 well. However, HTC still did not get satisfied with its product innovation.

Although according to HTC’s Decentralized Chief Officer Phil Chen that the earlier release of Exodus 1 is still available and is hitting their internal targets, the company has sought to it that their market can get the best out of a smartphone and cryptocurrency. So HTC came up with the much cheaper version: The Exodus 1s.

The Exodus 1s has display features of 5.7 inch that is 1440 x 720 pixels. Clear enough for ultra-HD videos and games. The phone’s curved glass display helps the user to navigate the screen easier than a flat, edged one. Exodus has powerful hardware of octa-core snapdragon 435. Adreno 505 GPU, 4GB RAM, and 64GB storage run the phone.

What HTC is proud of the Exodus 1s is the phone’s capability to handle a full Bitcoin node. One has only to extend the Exodus 1s’ memory through an SD Card with 400+ GB of data allowance. The whole of Bitcoin ledger takes up to 260GB which increases by 60+GB each year.

HTC’s Exodus 1s is not behind the non-bitcoin smartphones in the market. This new flagship has 13MP rear camera, LED Flash, f/2.2 aperture, PDAF, and 1080p video recording. Its 13MP front-facing camera has f/2.4 aperture with LED flash. The phone is powered by android 8.1 (Oreo), HTC Sense UI and is kept by a fingerprint security system, the sensor is found at the back of the phone.

“We gave users the ability to own their keys [with the HTC Exodus 1],” said Chen. “And now we’ve gone one step further to allow users to run their full Bitcoin node.”

The newest and cheaper version of the blockchain phone is priced at $244.