Back during October last year, HTC surprised the world with the launch of the Exodus 1, its blockchain smartphone and a “secure cryptocurrency wallet”. Now, the Taiwan-based smartphone company has officially announced the successor to the Exodus 1, the Exodus 1s.
The Exodus 1s is a cheaper variant of its predecessor, with a retail price between US$200 and US$300 (between RM832 and RM1249). Versus the Exodus 1’s original asking price of US$950 (~RM4000), and only purchasable with Bitcoin or Ethereum. Moreover, HTC says that the phone will be capable of acting as a full Bitcoin node; a feature that Peter Chen, CEO of HTC, says is a “really important piece of the pie” for the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Besides the return of the Zion secure storage, the Exodus 1s also has some new features. For a start, Key is a new feature that transforms the phone into the node blockchain node we mentioned earlier. For context, Bitcoin nodes are currently limited to just 9500 active nodes, and HTC says that more Bitcoin nodes are needed if the cryptocurrency is to sustain its decentralised nature.
Further, the Exodus 1s merely supports a “pruned version” of the Bitcoin node, measuring in at just 10GB of the most essential information. This is in comparison to the typical 200GB of storage required for a Bitcoin node, with typical growth of 60GB year-on-year.
HTC says that the Exodus 1s will be made available later this year, and will be purchasable with cryptocurrency, US dollars, and other fiat currencies. Sadly, not much else is known about the Exodus 1s’ full hardware specification.
(Source: Techspot, CoinDesk, VentureBeat // Image: VentureBeat)
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