A recent test of the HTC Exodus 1S smartphone reveals that it can only mine just $1.387 a year.
An underwhelming performance for a blockchain mining smartphone. The HTC Exodus 1S is being marketed as a smartphone that can mine cryptocurrencies while charging.
While this is a nifty feature, a recent test revealed its somewhat disappointing mining capability. The Exodus 1S can mine the Monero cryptocurrency when it is plugged in and in idle mode.
Users can run the DeMiner app on the background while charging to allow the smartphone to mine. The app is being developed by Midas Labs and it is expected to roll out within the second quarter of the year.
Mining test
Midas Lab engineer Jri Lee recently subjected an HTC Exodus 1S to a mining test. He found out that the phone can mine about $0.0038 worth of Monero every day. This means that it can mine about $1.387 a year.
If we're going to make the leap to Bitcoin from fiat money, we're going to need a device to do that.
Meet the EXODUS 1s, a cryptophone for all. pic.twitter.com/RsBs7eg2gm
— HTC EXODUS (@htcexodus) October 19, 2019
The HTC Exodus 1S costs around $237. Doing the math, the phone will take around 170 years for it to be able to pay for itself. Cryptocurrency mining is not the main feature of the HTC Exodus 1S. HTC is selling the Exodus as a smartphone first, and miner second.
Blockchain mining is just a nifty feature that users can turn on while the phone is charging. The interesting point here is that HTC was able to develop a smartphone powerful enough to mine cryptocurrency.
Allowing smartphones to mine cryptocurrencies means that it could create a larger decentralized network. This is an important aspect of cryptocurrency as it negates large mining pools to own and control huge amounts of the blockchain.
HTC’s Phil Chen said in a statement:
“The crypto world is under threat from the domination of the hashrate by giant mining pools. The most effective way to eliminate this problem is to make mining accessible for the masses, and that is through mobile.”
HTC Exodus 1S specs
Looking under the hood, the HTC Exodus S1 has a decent set of specs. It has a Snapdragon 243 chipset with an octa-core processor, and 4GB of RAM. It runs on Android 8.11 Oreo, and has 64GB of storage space.
The phone has a 5.7-inch IPS LCD display with a 720×1440 resolution. It supports Wi-Fi Direct, Bluetooth 5.0, and microUSB 2.0. The phone has a 3075mAh battery pack.
It has a 13-megapixel rear-facing main camera, and a 13-megapixel front-facing selfie camera. In terms of video recording, the main camera supports 2160p@30fps, while the front-facing cam supports 1080p@30fps recording.
Released in December 2019, the HTC Exodus 1S costs around $237.
Image courtesy of Kote Puerto/Unsplash