HTC’s blockchain phone, the Exodus 1, is now available for pre-order

It’s an important day for HTC. 

The company’s Android smartphones, once touted as among the best around (they’re still pretty good), haven’t been selling very well in recent years. But HTC is reinventing itself with a new device, that fully jumps onto the hottest trend in technology: the blockchain. 

Starting today, HTC is accepting pre-orders for the Exodus 1, an “early access” version of the previously announced Exodus device. 

In smartphone terms, the Exodus 1 a pretty powerful phone, in line with the top flagships of today. It’s got a 6-inch Quad HD display with 18:9 aspect ratio, a dual, 16-megapixel back camera and a dual, 8-megapixel selfie camera. It’s powered by a Snapdragon 845 processor, and it’s got 6GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, a 3,500mAh battery and IP68 dust/waterproof rating. Its only weak point, specs-wise, is the fact that it’s running Android Oreo and not Android Pie. 

We don’t know much about the design, beyond the render (below) which indicates that the phone might have a see-through back, similar to the design of the HTC U12+. 

More interesting than the specs are the phone’s blockchain-related capabilities. First, it comes with a “secure enclave,” which HTC describes as a “locked area on the device that is protected from the Android OS.” This is where you hold your cryptocurrency private keys; ideally, even if your phone’s security gets compromised in some ways, the private keys in the secure enclave should remain safe. 

HTC’s Decentralized Chief Officer (yes, that’s a real title), Phil Chen, told me via e-mail that the secure enclave is not a separate chip. Instead, it’s utilizing ARM’s TrustZone tech, which is typically used for payment, authentication and content protection. This is “the first time anyone has given access to the TrustZone to the people,” Chen told me. 

The phone also has an interesting way of retrieving your private keys even if your phone is lost in stolen. It involves picking a few trustworthy contacts, each of whom must download an app. Then, your private key’s seed is split using a secret sharing algorithm (based on a well-known cryptography concept called Shamir’s Secret Sharing, Chen confirmed to me), with each part sent to your contacts. None of them can retrieve the key on their own, but you can retrieve the key by combining all the parts. Another advantage of this approach is that your key is sort of in the cloud, but it’s not stored in any central location and certainly not on HTC’s servers. 

HTC will release APIs for third party developers to create apps that work with the Exodus 1 hardware. The phone will also come with pre-installed, blockchain-related apps, but Chen says the specifics of that will be revealed at a later stage. 

I’ve asked Chen about the “Exodus 1” moniker, and the company’s “early access” language, which makes the device sound like an early version of something. 

“This is a 1.0 version,” Chen told me. “The problem we’re solving is obviously very complicated and there’s a reason no one has managed to do it yet. Namely, giving tools to the people to own their own keys and also when they lose they their phone, the ability to recover it. We need the help of the community to harden our wallet and make it more secure. The crypto internet is still in its infant stages, the Exodus is the first attempt to lay the foundation for that internet. And the first step is to empower and educate the consumer to own their own keys.” he said.

As for the company’s original announcement that each Exodus phone will allow users to run a cryptocurrency node, Chen also says this will be added in a “later stage.” 

The HTC Exodus 1 can be pre-ordered at https://www.htcexodus.com/ in 34 countries, including the U.S., Taiwan, HK, Singapore, New Zealand, UK, Austria, Norway and “other European countries.” 

In true blockchain style, HTC is pricing the phone in Ethereum and Bitcoin. You will be able to buy it with those two coins, at a price of 0.15 BTC or 4.78 ETH. That’s roughly $960 at the time of writing, but given crypto’s volatility, it might be a considerably different number at publish time.  

Disclosure: The author of this text owns, or has recently owned, a number of cryptocurrencies, including BTC and ETH.