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Taiwan's consumer electronics maker HTC is making its blockchain phone more accessible.
Previously only available for purchase with bitcoin or ether, the HTC EXODUS 1 can now be purchased with US dollars and other fiduciary currency.
Announced Tuesday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the company has also expanded the range of encrypted currencies accepted for the phone, including the litecoin and BNB token Binance.
Phil Chen, "Decentralized CEO" at HTC, told CoinDesk that "it's more of an essential launch" after the start of the phone's early access period last year.
For now, the $ 699 phone is still sold exclusively online. Although Mr. Chen said that HTC would work to potentially start selling the device in the operators' stores, conversations with these operators are still in their infancy.
He added:
"We have already had a preliminary conversation, but one of the reasons we are going to Mobile World Congress is to have these conversations."
Build Web 3.0
HTC has also announced today the integration of EXODUS to the Opera Web browser, designed to simplify the use of crypto-currencies by customers.
On the one hand, customers who load cryptographic funds into Zion's mobile wallet app will be able to micropay on websites with the help of Opera or decentralized apps. (dapps) loaded on the device itself.
EXODUS was built to support the Web 3.0 movement, Chen said. At one point, he hopes to have 80% of the most popular dapps loaded on the phone, with Opera just "the beginning".
In a statement, Charles Hamel, head of cryptography at Opera Browser, said his company was "proud to associate with EXODUS and set a new standard for the usability and security of cryptography."
"We are at the dawn of a new generation of the Web, a new generation of decentralized services challenging the status quo. HTC and Opera have made the bold decision to be the first to take the lead and enable this transformation, "he added.
security
To protect users' crypto-currencies, the phone has a "sort of fenced-in area," usually called a "trusted runtime environment," Chen said.
This secure environment is not cold storage because users can connect the wallet to the Internet. However, the phone's operating system can not interact with the wallet, giving it some protection from malicious players that could compromise the phone itself, Chen said.
And if users lose their private keys, Chen said that they could fall back on HTC's social key recovery system, announced last year.
In the social key recovery settings of the device, users can select a small number of their contacts to receive some of the private keys of the device. If the device is lost or inaccessible, the user can then recover part of the key of each contact.
"Regarding the solution of a social key recovery, I think it's also a major breakthrough. What happens when you lose your phone? Chen asked, explaining:
"It's a fundamental problem. If you lose your device or private keys, what happens if you lose your phone? Find the solution of separating your keys … without us having access to your keys or storing them on a server … this has been a big step forward for us. "
Strong competition
Chen sets an ambitious goal for the HTC EXODUS. He hopes to ship 1 million units by the end of 2019 (for comparison, HTC would have sold about 0.98 million smartphones in 2017. Figures for 2018 were not immediately available) .
Chen declined to say what kind of interest the phone had raised at the start of his access period, although a press release said the extended buy option came after "crypto community validation".
The company will have fierce competition. Last week, Samsung – the world's largest mobile phone manufacturer – announced that its new flagship product, the Galaxy S10, will include support for secure storage of blockchain keys. Unlike EXODUS, the device will be mass marketed to consumers from the start.
However, the S10 will be significantly more expensive, the base model costing $ 899.99. The cheapest variant, the S10e, sells for $ 749.99, which is $ 50 more than EXODUS.
In addition, where EXODUS has its unique distributed key recovery system, Samsung will save private keys stored on the device through the company's "Find My Mobile" service.
Blockchain startups are also selling their own devices, with Sirin Labs selling Finney for $ 999 and Electroneum announcing the M1 smartphone at Mobile World Congress on Monday, targeting developing regions with an offer of $ 80.
Picture of HTC EXODUS 1 via Nikhilesh De for CoinDesk
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