HTC’s Exodus 1s Capable of Running a Full Bitcoin Node

Smartphone manufacturer HTC has unveiled its latest blockchain phone capable of holding the entire bitcoin ledger, Forbes reported on 10 October.

Introduced during the Lightning Conference in Berlin, the Exodus 1s is the first blockchain phone in the world able to run a complete Bitcoin node, allowing users to propagate transactions and blocks on the go. Phil Chen, HTC’s decentralized chief officer, said in an interview:

“We’ll certainly learn a lot of how people will interact with bitcoin, what they do with a full node, and we want to apply those learnings to future other public blockchains.”

The new phone comes only at a third of the price of its predecessor, priced at around $250, but will initially only be available for sale in 27 countries across Europe, Taiwan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

As the phone comes with only 63 GB of storage, users will have to purchase an SD card to expand its memory, as the current size of the full ledger is around 250 GB.

The 1s can also hold multiple cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), and Binance Coin (BNB), thanks to its built-in hardware wallet.

It seems that the blockchain-dedicated smartphones industry is becoming busier, with many companies trying to get a piece of the crypto pie.

In 2018 blockchain startup Sirin Labs teamed up with phone electronics manufacturing giant Foxconn to release a blockchain phone called Finney.

In January 2019, Samsung launched the Galaxy S10, and later introduced the phone’s blockchain keystore, which offers a variety of DApps.

Last month, Huobi-backed startup Whole Network introduced its Acute Angle blockchain phone, which at the time was seen as a low-priced blockchain phone, as its competitor Finney was priced at around $1000.