[ad_1]
Exodus 1 did not make its world debut on the stage at the TechCrunch in Shenzhen. This was the plan, but things, as the saying goes, happen. It simply did not make its way from Hong Kong to China in time.
I will not lie, I was a little suspicious of this last round of events. After a month making fun of his blockchain phone, HTC relied mainly on wire frames and render, and now it was MIA, a matter of weeks before it hit the market.
But we managed to get our hands on the thing, following the event. Here, for all the world to see, framed against a horrible carpet of the hotel, which seems to be one of the few constants, regardless of where you happen to go in the world.
The device is a nice standard piece of HTC hardware – one hard to distinguish from the U12. HTC he was quite frank about this, and it's not a surprise, really. It seems that the company is not making any illusions about whether Exodus will be a great success – or, the kind of success the company needs after a couple of difficult years that culminated in 1,500 layoffs in July.
As such, the company is using the device as a conductor for a kind of beta test between the kind of enthusiastic cryptic that could pay the Bitcoin / Ether equivalent of $ 700-900, unseen sight. For this reason, HTC has not done much to optimize the hardware, beyond some chip-level adjustments like the addition of a secure enclave on the Snapdragon chip. The only great aesthetic update here is the addition of an HTC Exodus logo engraved on the transparent back (which is highly reflective, so the corners are a little embarrassing here).
While holding the device in hand, HTC was not yet ready to show Zion's interface (keeping the Genesis block interface / Exodus biblical theme) – the micro operating system found on Android, offering a safe place in which it stores the keys. Although you plan to show it off before or around the December shipping date of the laptop.
In a conversation of this week's event in Shenzhen, HTC's decentralized director, Phil Chen, told TechCrunch that the company is "as busy as it is for the Vive. I do not think it's the number one in the list of priorities, but I would say it is the number three or four. "
The growth of the category, however, will be slow, even more than an upward boost of what HTC had in its early days of Android adoption. As such, society is making small steps with Exodus, rather than incorporating these technologies into one of its more traditional devices. Although that change is likely to happen soon. I would not be too surprised to see some sort of blockchain technology incorporated into a next successor of U12.
The company is open to licensing these technologies to third parties, similar to what happens with the offers already launched by Google as an aid for the industrial design of Pixel devices. Chen says he can also see a model similar to the ways HTC's Viveport technologies work with third parties, even though these companies should be willing to give up access to user data – an essential part of many business models. current.
That said, the future of all this is still very high in the air. "I see myself as trusted Android," says Chen, vaguely referring to a future road map that finds HTC shifting the focus from hardware to software and to IP. "We are not talking [monetization] now, but we have some ideas. "
While the devoted blockchain phone is largely a stepping stone towards integrating that technology into more traditional devices, there are plans to continue development on the line, as the name Exodus 1 suggests optimistically. Chen explains that the company is working to follow that it will be further distinguished from other laptops, although it is not ready to discuss specifics.
Currently, HTC has between 20 and 30 engineers working on the blockchain project, bringing space experts to educate them about the complexities of technology. Event among those who are currently busy building the device, this is clearly a learning process.
