HTC Exodus 1 — A blockphone!
When I heard about the new HTC Exodus 1 phone I get to remember the first Google phone from HTC, Google Nexus One! For me, it was a compromise after losing my first iPhone on a New Year’s over drunk night! But it proved to be much more than a compromise!. In fact, that phone gave almost the same user experience as an iPhone and never broke. I did all customizations with many custom ROM’s at that time and eventually, returned to the stock ROM from Google!. I might be able to still find it somewhere in my house and connect it to WiFi and make a call. I am sure it will work fine! A big thank you for that phone to introducing me to the world of Android!.
But this time it is different! There is no Google with them. HTC is not doing pretty good business with phones in recent times and much of that their Chinese rivals have taken. But I think they still have that pioneer innovative blood in them, at least their co-founder has it — Phil Chen . Phil has renamed his title at HTC as Decentralized Chief Officer ever since he got inspired by the blockchain technology. For HTC the addition of blockchain and the decision to come up with a blockchain phone — “blockphone” is not a mere gimmick to get market attention but they are very serious about it.
“I find it quite frightening to think that we’re this far into the information age and there’s no concept of digital property,” — Phil Chen
This is the foundational principle on which HTC has decided to come up with a blockchain phone — protect your data. In this information age, we do most of the things on the internet and leave our data in an open space. With the advent of machine learning, data analysis, AI systems more data being processed, data security or own your data is critical even for the evolution of the internet. When this phone was launched on Oct 22 and made available for pre-order, HTC has made it clear what you expect from the first version of their blockchain phone. It is pretty much basic and mostly meant for a niche market of crypto traders and blockchain believers. This phone does not offer a heavily disruptive blockchain phone like the XPhone from PundiX which will be launched sometime in the future. But I personally doubt whether the blockchain technology itself is ready for such a massive disruption. Instead, HTC Exodus 1 is a foundational phone for blockchain technology which ensures data security by creating a parallel micro operating system within a regular commercial grade android phone using software and hardware technologies. Whenever you would like to make crypto-based transactions or own non-fungible tokens you will be using this secure space in the phone and API’s provided by HTC will help to build applications for this purpose. Let’s take a closer look at the phone.
I could not find a real image of the phone yet other than the one you all have already seen.
Among the features listed, the first one is what initially grabbed my attention when I first visited the HTC exodus website — Secure Enclave. This is not a new innovation from HTC. The latest Apple iPhone and Google Pixel and Samsung phones have similar technology added for higher data security. This is essentially a separate chip in your phone and has its own processor, memory, and OS and runs as a separate thing inside your phone’s regular OS. This isolated space can handle critical data like your biometric data or data encryption keys or even crypto private keys. The implementations are different on different phones. Some have a separate chip and some others have a designated space in the processor to handle this. How HTC is going to implement and make use of this is yet to be seen!.
The true power of HTC Exodus 1 will be accomplished when there are enough DApps which run on this phone making use of the API’s provided. One thing the makers of this phone vision is to enhance customers to truly own a digital content in the form of digital tokens without anyone, including the carrier, the phone manufacturer, software provider, government agency able to take it away from you without your permission. This is a great vision and brings back the kind of ownership we have in our physical world to the digital world. But again at this point, I have no idea about the phone DApps which are can run on this phone and whether or not HTC is going to provide a DApp store with this phone!.
A decentralized application or DApp is an application that is run by many users on a decentralized network with trustless protocols. They are designed to avoid any single point of failure. They typically have tokens to reward users for providing computing power.
The trusted UI (trusted user interface) is a specific mode in which a mobile device is controlled by the TEE (Trusted Execution Environment)— a secure area that resides in the main processor of a smartphone (or any mobile device) and ensures that sensitive data is stored, processed and protected in a trusted environment. The trusted UI verifies that the information displayed on a mobile device screen comes from an approved trusted application and is isolated from the rich operating system (OS), which is vulnerable to malicious malware attacks. Again this is not a new technology. TEE supported phones have been there for quite some time!
This is good news for crypto traders!. The phone definitely has a cryptowallet for storing, transacting crypto coins. I could not find more specifics about this at this time!.
Another cool feature in this phone is the Social Key Recovery!.
Being different from a regular smartphone, recovery in a blockchain phone is going to be different as well. You cannot store all your phone data in the cloud and lock your phone when you lose it by calling the carrier and then recover your data later from the cloud. For phone recovery and most important your digital key recovery, HTC has come up with something called social key recovery where your keys are managed by a secure algorithm which splits your keys and allows to share it with a maximum of five of your close friends or family. You can recover your keys and eventually phone data when you lose your phone by at least getting your keys back from three of your friends or family!.
HTC has not provided any specifics on whether this phone itself is going to be running in a blockchain network like the XPhone from PundiX. This is not going to be a feature in HTC Exodus 1, but there were a lot of speculations in that direction initially when HTC first mentioned the idea of coming out with a blockchain phone. So this is just a foundational phone which essentially allows storing and owning your digital keys secure from anything and provides an innovative recovery option. HTC plans to get the blockchain developer community involved for the DApps which can run on this phone eventually.
For crypto enthusiasts and blockchain believers, this phone is a good start for the price since you are getting all of a regular flagship phone plus the added crypto components and DApps yet to be seen!
Hold on! You cannot buy this phone with regular currency!. You need to have either bitcoin or ether cryptocurrencies in your account for the purchase. If you don’t have these digital currencies you can purchase them from coinbase with your regular currency and coinbase is available in most of the crypto friendly countries!
Phil Chen Interview Credits:
https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/what-is-a-blockchain-phone-we-asked-an-expert/
