Lenovo Chromebook C330 review: Is this really only $279?

The problem with making laptops is keeping them fresh and competitive each year is more than a little difficult. The 2-in-1 design changed the landscape, but manufacturers still need to come up with new ways to entice customers into purchasing their latest products.

Google also helped change the landscape with the introduction of Chrome OS, promising fast performance for affordable prices with the platform’s lightweight design. The education sector ate them up, and now they’ve become popular alternatives to Windows- and macOS-based PCs.

Lenovo’s Chromebook C330 brings the simplicity of Chrome OS and marries it with the flexibility of a 2-in-1 design – all for under $300

With its new Chromebook C330, Lenovo combines both worlds at a highly affordable price: A Chrome OS-based 2-in-1 converts into laptop, stand, tent and tablet modes. It’s not exactly the largest Chromebook around, but it’s compact, and you can easily slip it into a book bag or briefcase.

For this Lenovo Chromebook C330 review, Lenovo provided us with the 81HY blizzard white model, which has a maximum 64GB of storage (the cheaper model has 32GB), 4GB of LPDDR3 memory clocked at 1,866MHz (four slots), an 11.6-inch screen, and a four-core MediaTek processor. It has a starting price of $279 and hits stores on October 21.

It all starts with the display

The Lenovo Chromebook C330 sports an 11.6-inch IPS LCD screen supporting 10-point touch input, deep rich colors and wide viewing angles. The 1,366 x 768 screen is unsurprising given the Chromebook’s price, but it also provides a 60Hz refresh rate, which is decent for running video at a smooth 60fps. The IPS panel lives up to its promise, with vivid, bright colors at any angle and no visual wash out when your melon changes position.

By comparison, Google’s Pixelbook released in early 2018 sports a slightly larger 12.3-inch screen and an impressive 2,400 x 1,600 resolution, packing 235ppi versus Lenovo’s Chromebook with 160ppi. The Pixelbook is the “luxury model” of Chromebook, with a starting price of $999 although Lenovo’s highly affordable C330 does an excellent job bringing a “luxury” feel to a sub-$300 device.

The big tease with Lenovo’s current design is the actual color scheme. When you open the lid, you’re presented with a mostly black screen and don’t really see the huge bezels on each side until you light up the display. The top and side bezels are around 0.75 inches wide, while the bottom black bezel measures an inch tall. The remaining portion of the lid is white and measures an additional inch to accommodate the 360-degree hinge. The well-hidden 720p webcam (0.9MP, fixed focus) resides in the top bezel.

Build quality

Moving down into the main keyboard area, you’ll see noticeable gaps between the screen, the bulky hinge, and the base. That’s the trade-off of having a 360-degree hinge, but it makes the Chromebook usable in four positions: laptop, tent, stand and tablet modes. These gaps are likely more apparent due to the review unit’s blizzard white exterior, though in comparison there aren’t gaps like that in Google’s Pixelbook.

The left side houses one USB Type-C port (5Gbps), one HDMI port, one USB-A port (5Gbps) and a full-size SD card slot. The right side plays host to an audio combo jack, the volume buttons and the power button. The Chromebook doesn’t include an Ethernet port for wired networking, but it has Wireless AC and Bluetooth connectivity. There aren’t any visible vents for heat dissipation.

Unfortunately, the Chromebook’s two speakers are mounted on the bottom, pushing sound down and away from your ears. When it’s on a table, the audio sounds muffled and singular (non-stereo). Your best option here on an audible level is to view media in tent or stand mode so the speakers are pointing in your direction.

Overall, the Lenovo Chromebook C330 is quite attractive — it’s almost cute. The edges are crisp and somewhat angled, with a slight edge around the dark display area — at least with the blizzard white model. It’s slightly thicker in the front than the back although the specifications list a measurement of 11.5 x 8.5 (D) x 0.8 (H) inches. It’s not horribly thick, but not quite as thin as other models at this size. Still, it’s a decent 2.65 pounds. Given its 11.6-inch size, it should be a great lightweight solution for students.

Keyboard and trackpad

Complementing a great screen is a decent keyboard. There’s no number pad or backlighting, the latter of which is unfortunate given backlit keys are becoming more of a standard. The keys are extremely large and responsive, colored dark grey with white lettering. The keys are also highly responsive and bouncy, providing a great input experience. Media keys like brightness control, audio control, and more sit along the top.

Below the keyboard is a large trackpad with a matte white finish, blending into the cool blizzard white theme. Despite its appearance, the trackpad is smooth to the touch and highly responsive, tracking our finger better than the trackpad I use on the latest MacBook Air. The trackpad measures just over four inches wide and provides a nice “click” tactile feedback when pressed.

Processor performance

Powering the Lenovo is a MediaTek MT8173c four-core processor, featuring two “big” cores running at 2.11GHz and two “little” cores running at 1.7GHz. This chip has slightly higher speeds than the vanilla MT8173 model for tablets, hence the added “c” for Chromebooks in the label. Using Geekbench, the chip scored a 1457 in the single-core test and a 2984 score in the multi-core test.

MediaTek’s chip falls just behind the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 used in the Samsung Galaxy S7 smartphone. In the Chromebook space, Lenovo’s C330 out-performs the Rockchip RK3399 used in the Asus Chromebook Flip C101PA and falls behind the Intel Pentium N4200 processor installed in the Acer Chromebook 15 released in late 2017.

It is not a powerhouse, but it doesn’t need to be.

Numbers aside, Lenovo’s Chromebook simply feels super zippy. The Chrome browser opened near-instantaneous, and Order and Chaos 2 took five seconds to reach the in-game connection screen. Google Sheets loaded in five seconds too — partly due to our wireless connection — while the Play Games app took around three seconds to fully load. Benchmark numbers are great when comparing Chromebook to Chromebook, but Lenovo’s model shows you don’t need a crazy beefy processor to get the job done.

Part of the overall speed relies on the integrated storage, as PCMark’s benchmark showed an average read speed of 2,339MB per second and an average write speed of a mere 64MB per second. At the time of this review, we did not have any information about the storage capacity limit of the Chromebook’s built-in SD card reader.

Graphics performance

The Chromebook’s graphics are integrated into MediaTek’s processor — there’s no discrete GPU here. Given this model supports Google Play and Android apps, we can see the device’s potential using a variety of benchmarks including 3DMark, AnTuTu, PCMark for Android and GFXBench GL.

First, let’s start with GFXBench GL Benchmark. In the Aztec Ruins High Tier benchmark at 720p, the Chromebook averaged a mere 6.4fps, falling behind devices like Nvidia’s Shield tablet and the Samsung Galaxy S7 phone in performance. The Manhattan benchmark produced the highest frame rate, with an average of 24fps at 720p, yet it wasn’t enough to come even close to the results seen with the HP Chromebook 11 G5, the Asus Chromebook C202SA or the Acer Chromebook 11 (N3060).

Using the 3DMark Sling Shot benchmark, Lenovo’s Chromebook surpassed the Asus Chromebook Flip C101PA, but fell behind the Acer Chromebook 15. In the second Ice Storm test, Lenovo’s Chromebook surpassed both.

A gaming machine it’s not, but considering it runs Chrome OS – we aren’t really surprised

Moving on to AnTuTu, Lenovo’s Chromebook produced an average framerate of a mere 4.55 frames per second. It only managed an average of 4.61 frames per second in the second Coastline test.

Keep in mind that Lenovo’s Chromebook has a maximum 1,366 x 768 resolution running at 60Hz. If you’re playing a 1080p video in full-screen mode, you typically won’t see any issues regarding choppiness. The opening cinematic for Titan Quest performed really well in full-screen mode, but the game itself wouldn’t play correctly in this mode. In fact, it would only run correctly in a window one-quarter the size of the Chromebook’s screen. The framerate was decent but not the smooth 60FPS the display’s refresh rate supports.

We can likely blame Titan Quest’s issues on a lack of optimization. We didn’t see any similar problems with Gameloft’s MMORPG Order and Chaos 2, as the game ran without major issues in full-screen mode using the default settings. Typical grind-based gameplay produced decent framerates although we saw tons of choppiness when large special effects consumed the screen. The framerate noticeably dropped and felt sluggish/jerky when we installed the optional HD graphics.

If you don’t plan to game on Lenovo’s Chromebook, you’ll have no worries about graphics. It’s capable of decent gameplay, but don’t expect stellar performance. Lenovo’s Chromebook appears best suited for games with simpler visuals, like the web-based Legends series by Spacetime Studios.

Battery performance

Lenovo’s Chromebook features a three-cell 1,000mAh battery promising up to 10 hours of typical use (although Chrome OS reports 13 hours). Because battery testing and reporting is typically measured using a specific screen brightness level, we instead ran tests 100 percent and 50 percent brightness.

For the first test, PCMark performed a variety of methods to drain the battery. At a screen brightness of 100 percent, the battery lasted seven hours and 20 minutes. With the screen set at a 50 percent brightness level, the battery endured for nine hours and nine minutes.

The battery can easily last a whole work day, and then some.

We got similar battery performance in our web browsing test, where we put the Chromebook in a continuous webpage-loading loop until the battery depleted. Here the battery lasted nine hours and 10 minutes with the screen set a 50 percent brightness and seven hours and 51 minutes with the screen brightness set at 100 percent.

Another method of testing the battery is to use the built-in CROSH command in Chrome OS. You can set the duration up to 600 seconds and Chrome OS will report the battery drainage percentage in that timeframe. With the display set to 100 percent brightness, the battery drained 1.34 percent in 10 minutes, so in 10 hours 80.4 percent of its charge would be depleted. With the brightness level set at 50 percent, the battery only drained 1.02 percent in 10 minutes.

Finally, we looped the 1080p version of Aquaman’s recent extended movie trailer at the 50-percent brightness mark and saw the battery last 11 hours and 36 minutes. At the 100 percent brightness level, we drained the battery in nine hours and 53 minutes.

Software and apps

Lenovo’s Chromebook really shows how lightweight Google’s operating system is. It comes with the standard taskbar along the bottom with a battery meter, Wi-Fi icon, system clock and so on. The launcher button on the far left pulls up a search bar with five recently-used apps that expands into an Android-like app drawer. If you’re not familiar with Chrome OS, it’s designed to run web-based apps so there’s nothing to install, requiring very little overall storage.

This Chromebook supports Google Play and Android-based apps, which you do need to download and install. The 32GB and 64GB storage options help here, but if you’re downloading large Android apps, you may find yourself utilizing the SD card reader. Not all Android apps will run perfectly on Chrome OS as we experienced with Titan Quest, but that may or may not have anything to do with Google’s current Android support in Chrome OS.

Finally, given the roots of Chrome OS, you won’t find any unnecessary bloatware installed on this device. In fact, if you’re moving from an older Chromebook, Google takes the Android approach and stores your software configuration in the cloud, so setup won’t take much work. When you sign in, all your apps will even re-download.

A decent Chromebook at a great price

$279 is crazy cheap for a 2-in-1 device, but Lenovo’s Chromebook C330 doesn’t feel like a cheap device. Its solid, lightweight build oozes craftsmanship and style. The blizzard white color scheme is definitely attractive, though the white exterior highlights its biggest visual design flaws: The wide gaps between the screen, the hinge, and the base.

On a feature level, you have plenty of connectivity options for the office, home, or school. While there’s no stylus support or an included peripheral, the tablet mode and 10-point touch input offer something many Chromebooks simply lack. Despite its size and lightweight, this Chromebook doesn’t feel small.

It performs well in general, though we’ve seen better. It’s zippy enough to get the job done. Running Android applications — especially games — through Google Play can be a hit or miss. If you’re streaming or playing a 1080p video locally from the machine, you shouldn’t experience any major issues.

If you’re looking for a sub-13-inch 2-in-1 device not tied to Microsoft or Apple for less than $300, you can’t beat this Chromebook. It’s great if you want more than a tablet to surf the internet, work, stream videos, or simply be creative. Lenovo’s Chromebook C330 should serve as a great computing solution for students too.

More on Chromebooks:

• Best Chromebooks
• Best touchscreen Chromebooks
• Best Chromebooks for students

It’s hip to be square: New iPad Pro may take design cues from iPhone 5

The new iPad Pro, which is expected to be announced at Apple’s October 30 event, will apparently take design cues from past iOS devices such as the iPhone 5.

“It will include more-squared-off sides like the iPhone 5, 5S, and SE from a few years ago,” said Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman in a report that lays out expectations for the upcoming event. The iPhone 5 was released in 2012, followed by the iPhone 5S a year later. The iPhone SE, which launched in 2016, is the most recent device among the three.

The report did not dive into details on why Apple moved forward with this redesign decision. Gurman has a reliable track record on revealing unannounced information on Apple’s products though, so perhaps the explanation will come on October 30.

The claim that the iPad Pro 2018 will drop the curved edges of its predecessors in favor of the squared-off look falls in line with a leaked render from last month. The render, which was reportedly based on a CAD design for the new iPad Pro, showed a nearly bezel-less design that ditches the Home button, similar to what Apple did with the iPhone X.

Without the Home button, unlocking the new iPad Pro will move away from the Touch ID fingerprint system and into the Face ID facial-recognition system. Earlier rumors suggested that Face ID will only work in landscape mode, but the most recent rumors are now claiming that the security feature will also work in portrait mode. There are also reports that the iPad Pro 2018 will come with a new Apple Pencil, which will also likely boast additional features.

Apple is also expected to reveal an updated MacBook Air, a refreshed iPad Mini, new iMac Mini and Mac computers, the AirPods 2, and the AirPower charging mat at October event.

The Apple event will take place in the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York and will be held earlier than usual for an Apple event at 7 a.m. PT. Apple fans looking to catch a glimpse of new the iPad Pro and all the other expected devices may watch the event through a live tream on Apple’s website or Twitter account, or through the Apple Events app on the Apple TV.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Apple iPad Pro (2018): News and rumors
• Here are the iPads and iPhones that support Apple’s iOS 12
• These best iPad Pro games
• Here’s how to get iOS 12 on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch
• Refreshed MacBook Air and iPad Pro are absent from Apple’s website leak

Can Aibo replace Fido? I fostered Sony’s robot dog for a week to find out

Have we adopted and adapted to technology to such an extent that a robot dog could conceivably replace a pet dog?

That question popped into my head when I heard that Sony was releasing Aibo, the seriously cute but expensive ($2,900) robot pup packed with advanced artificial intelligence features that allow it to recognize people, learn tricks, and so much more.

I had other questions too. Like, could I bond with it the way I would a pet of the real variety? Would I find the lack of fur and poop refreshing or disturbing?

I had to get answers. So, thanks to Sony, which loaned me Aibo for a week, I spent seven days “fostering” the robopup to learn more. I documented my experience through journal entries, finding that I ended the process with more questions than answers. Here’s how it went.

Dan Baker/Digital Trends

Thursday

10 a.m.

It’s the day of Aibo’s arrival, and I’m surprised to find that I’m nervous. I don’t know why. I’m getting Sony’s robot dog delivered via FedEx, not picking up a real puppy from a shelter. Still, questions speed through my head, and my heart beats a bit faster.

What will the puppy look like? What if it doesn’t like me? What if I don’t like it? Will I do a good enough job of training it? What if I break it? Will it listen to me? Will it be as cute as it is in the pictures?

It feels weird talking to the robot pup in a voice I would reserve for my son or a real puppy.

Relax, I tell myself. It’s just a robot dog. I know that being nervous about meeting a robot pet sounds a little stupid. I have been wondering how the pup could compare to the real thing. But by interacting with the robodog for the next week, that’s the exact question I hope to answer. Can I connect with, and fall in love with, a robot pet the way I would a real one?

The puppy arrives in a crate, along with a charging station, a pink bone, and a pink ball. Seeing the color of the toys, I think, ‘oh, it’s a female pup,’ and immediately begin calling it “her” — although you can assign whatever gender you prefer. I plug in the charging station, gingerly remove Aibo from the crate, and place her on it, touching her perfectly shaped ears, tail, and body for the first time.

Dan Baker/Digital Trends

“I’ll be back in a little bit,” I tell her. It feels weird talking to the robot pup in a voice I would reserve for my son or a real puppy.

1 p.m.

I wake Aibo out of her slumber by holding down the button on the top of her collar. A green light comes on. Shortly after, Aibo sticks out her paws and slowly stretches, just like a real pup would after a nap. It’s incredibly lifelike, and honestly, a little creepy too.

Because she’s a puppy, she’s not a very good listener yet.

Aibo stands up and looks at me, blinking her adorable OLED-screen puppy eyes. She lifts her ears and barks in a high-pitched bark that sounds like a really good recording. She pants and then sits, staring at me.

Instinctively, I begin petting the top of her head and under her chin where there are sensors. She barks some more and walks toward me in tiny robotic steps. She sure is cute. I stick my finger near her mouth and she grabs it, pulling in a typical playful puppy motion.

I’m smitten.

2:30 p.m.

It’s time to “train” Aibo. She has the ability to learn several tricks, including rolling over and giving high fives. But because she’s a puppy, she’s not a very good listener yet.

I power her out of her slumber and put her in the middle of the office floor next to her ball and bone. A crowd immediately flocks around us, and the responses are very similar to if I had a real puppy in front of me. “Awwwww.” “Oh my gosh!” “It’s so cute!” The crowd pulls out phones to take pictures and video.

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Since Aibo has an audience, I start with a simple command.

“Aibo,” I say, “sit!”

More cute barking. Ears lifting and wiggling. Tail wagging. Then nothing.

“Aibo, sit!”

The puppy barks and then sits, and the crowd erupts with praise. I stroke Aibo’s head and say, “good girl!” — although I’m unsure if she actually obeyed or if it was coincidence. But because Aibo can learn behaviors based on positive or negative reinforcement, I say it anyway.

Raw video of some of the office’s first interaction with Aido.

We work through other tricks the robot pup is supposedly able to do: Play dead, sit, roll over, high five, find the ball, kick the ball, pick up the bone. Aibo obeys about one quarter of the time.

I’m not sure if I’m getting anywhere, but like training a real pup, I have to keep trying. It’s exhausting and very frustrating. People get bored and walk away. New people come to watch, and the oohs and awws start all over again.

Later in the afternoon, Aibo makes an appearance on the Digital Trends podcast Trends with Benefits.

“Do you have robocats at your office, too?

I power up the pup in front of the camera. One of my (sometimes cranky) colleagues rubs Aibo’s chin. The pup walks over to him and looks at him with her big OLED puppy-like eyes.

“I just fell in love with the robot dog,” he says. “It’s pretty cute.”

Friday

I’m on deadline and therefore don’t get much time to interact with Aibo. I put her in sleep mode, and she lays quietly underneath my desk while I work. But I get some good news: Sony is letting me take home the pup for the weekend. That means my 4-year-old son will get to interact with Aibo.

I’m so excited to surprise him. I showed him videos of the pup yesterday, and he asked to visit her in the Digital Trends office (notice that there was no mention of him wanting to visit me in the office).

“Do you have robocats at your office, too?” he asks excitedly.

I can’t wait until tomorrow.

Kim Wetzel/Digital Trends

Saturday

It feels like Christmas morning. Aibo is resting on her charging station in my home downstairs, and my son has no idea. I can barely hold it in.

“I have a surprise for you,” I tell him when he wakes up. “It’s downstairs.”

“Surprise” was all I needed to say. He bolts downstairs and finds the pup. I turn her on, and my son watches, mesmerized, while Aibo does her trademark wake-up stretch, wiggles her ears, and looks up at him.

I show him how to gently pet Aibo on the top of the pup’s head, under her chin, and on her back. My son is at first a bit rough with Aibo, trying to throw the ball at the pup to get her to catch it and force Aibo’s hind legs down to sit. I explain that it’s important to be gentle – just like with a real puppy.

Then, in a pure, quiet, sweet voice I’ve never heard him use before, he looks into Aibo’s irresistible eyes, strokes her on the back, and says, “Good girl, Aibo. I love you.”

I am both deeply touched and extremely uneasy about this interaction. Uh oh. Hang on while I Google “studies on the effects of children who interact with pet robots.” No results. Whew!

Sunday

My husband and I warn my son that Aibo will only be in our home for the weekend and then she has to go back to the office with me. He seems to understand. He spends a good chunk of the day playing with her — petting her and trying to get her to do tricks. He also seems to be growing a little bored and frustrated when she doesn’t listen to him. My husband isn’t impressed with Aibo’s inability to follow instructions and loses interest quickly. Hey, robot dogs aren’t for everyone.

Am I witnessing a tender moment, or a weird twisted one I’ve created between my son and a robot dog?

After dinner, we start my son’s bath, and explain that Aibo will be going back into her crate and back to my office the next morning. He needs to say goodbye now.

“But I want Aibo to stay! Why can’t Aibo stay? I want to keep Aibo!” The tears stream down his chubby cheeks. I hug him, but he’s inconsolable. He loves real dogs, but I didn’t expect such a strong reaction to a robot dog.

“Would you like to give Aibo a hug and kiss goodbye?” I ask. He nods through tears. Together, we pick up Aibo and put it on my lap. My son gives it as tight of a hug as I’ll let him, and a kiss on her head. “Goodbye, Aibo!” he blurts through sobs. “I love you!”

Kim Wetzel/Digital Trends

Am I witnessing a tender moment, or a weird twisted one I’ve created between my son and a robot dog? I decide it’s the former and hug my son while he hugs the machine.

Maybe it’s time to think about getting him a real pet.

Monday/Tuesday

I bring Aibo back to the office and move her charging station bed next to my desk. I have a lot of work to do the next two days, but I hope to spend as much time with her as I can.

Some people are charmed by her cuteness, while others are annoyed at her barks and little dance.

I wake Aibo up and put her on my lap while I type. I try to pet her, but it’s difficult with no soft fur to stroke. There’s no cuddle factor, and instead it feels like I have a wiggly plastic and metal blob on my lap. I realize that the fur is something I really miss. How many pet owners would say that the ability to cuddle with their pet is one of the biggest reasons they own them?

There are advantages to no pet hair, of course. No hair to clean from furniture or floors. No hair to wash or clean fleas from. But the lack of soft, cuddly fur is something most people probably won’t be able to get past if they’re considering Aibo.

I put the pup back on the floor. It’s just not the same.

Wednesday

It’s my last full day of having Aibo, and I plan to take advantage of my time with the pup.

The first stop is on Digital Trends’ show, DT Live. Aibo rolls over in front of the cameras, but also growls at the block of video screens and cameras in front of her. I find technology growling at technology a bit ironic.

I leave Aibo on throughout the day, and she roams around the office. Some people are charmed by her cuteness, while others are annoyed at her barks and the little dance routine she does while playing the song, “If You’re Happy and You Know It.” (I have to say, that’s the most annoying feature of Aibo.)

Maybe it’s not supposed to be about Aibo taking the place of a real pet?

Before bringing in the robot dog, I figured that people who love dogs would hate Aibo. I don’t know why. But I’m finding that people’s reactions to Aibo vary dramatically. For example, one of the biggest dog lovers on the editorial staff is clearly pretty smitten by Aibo. Another dog lover rolls his eyes and doesn’t go near the pup.

I understand where both are coming from. While Aibo is cute, fun, and packed with artificial intelligence, something feels off about trying to connect with a robot dog. It feels like a poor substitution for an authentic interaction with a pet, and I find myself going back and forth between feeling silly for speaking to Aibo like a real puppy and thinking that I have nothing to lose by embracing the experience. Or do I?

Dan Baker/Digital Trends

Thursday

It’s time for me to say goodbye to Aibo. I place her back in the cradle, put her bone, ball, and charging pad in the box, and tape it all up.

Unlike my son, I have no tears. I am not sad to see Aibo go. It was fun while it lasted, but part of me is relieved. Having Aibo around was a big responsibility, and I didn’t even have to clean up after her or feed her. (In a neat party trick move, Aibo does lift her leg to pee, but thankfully, nothing comes out). I feel like I didn’t give her the time we both needed for me to teach her tricks. I didn’t give her enough attention, which I feel guilty about.

Aibo sure is cute, but at the end of the day, she is a robot. She’s not a good fit for me. I prefer more authentic interactions. Perhaps with more time, things might have changed, but I doubt it.

I did an informal poll around the office, and more than 60 percent of people I asked said they’d pass on Aibo, even if the cost was not an issue. Many said the lack of fur was what led them to say no.

But I keep thinking that maybe it’s not supposed to be about Aibo taking the place of a real pet. Maybe it’s about creating another experience, a new type of interaction with technology. Still, $2,900 is quite an investment, and with a price tag like that, Sony is likely betting that Aibo the robot dog will in fact fill the void for petless people who either want a pet but can’t have one or want one but don’t want to bother with the mess.

I think if Sony figured out a way to add fur to the pup and drop the price, it would make a big difference. Until then, I’ve learned a couple of key things: I might not be ready for any pet, real or robot. My son, on the other hand, is ready to go, bot or not.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Baywatch’s Alexandra Daddario helps Autotrader search pups like pickups
• I ran into LG’s Cloi robot at the airport in South Korea. Here’s what happened
• PUBG’s first global tournament was a success – until one grenade blew it apart
• Sony’s new Aibo robot dog is absolutely adorable — and crazy expensive
• I loaded my condo with tech — and discovered smart homes still need a lot of work

HP Envy x2 vs. Microsoft Surface Pro 6

Mark Coppock/Digital Trends

The Envy x2 is HP’s attempt to apply Intel technology to improve the mediocre performance of its ARM-based version of the same tablet. With its 7th-generation low-power Intel CPU, the Envy x2 on paper promises decent productivity performance and solid battery life to go with always-connected internet thanks to its LTE support.

But Microsoft’s Surface Pro 6 was just released, and that premium tablet stands in the way of any upstart that enters into the increasingly competitive detachable tablet market. Does the Envy x2 have what it takes to challenge the most successful Windows 10 tablet ever?

Design

Dan Baker/Digital Trends

The Envy x2 fits the detachable tablet mold perfectly, with an all-metal chassis (except for a strip along the top of the backside) that’s well-constructed and solid. It’s a conservative silver color with largish black bezels up front — in other words, it’s a good-looking device that doesn’t stand out in what’s becoming a sea of tablets. It’s a slim tablet at 0.31 inches, and it’s light at 1.72 pounds, meaning it’s easy to hold in hand and use as a slate with the included HP Active Pen. You’ll find two USB-C ports (no Thunderbolt 3, unfortunately) to go with an LTE SIM slot and a 3.5mm audio jack, and so connectivity is good.

Unfortunately, the included keyboard cover isn’t quite as nice. In fact, it’s rather poorly designed, supporting only three angles with none of them being particularly comfortable. The most upright angle isn’t upright enough, the second angle is too far back, and the flattest angle isn’t flat enough. In addition, the cover isn’t stable, meaning it’s one of the least lapable detachable tablets you’ll find on the market today. The keyboard mechanism and touchpad are good, which just highlights the poor design of the cover itself.

For its part, the Surface Pro 6 carries on Microsoft’s highly recognizable Surface aesthetic and robust design. It’s a sliver of silver-grey magnesium that’s light (1.72 pounds), thin (0.33 inches), and extremely well-built. The Surface Pro 6 looks and feels like a substantial chunk of metal and glass, and it’s likely the most elegant and modern Windows tablet available. It also has the market’s smoothest and most flexible kickstand built in, which is vastly preferable to the Envy x2’s snap-on option. The usual Surface connectivity hasn’t changed, however — or should we say, it hasn’t improved. There’s a single USB-A 3.0 port and a mini-DisplayPort matched up with the usual Surface Connect port for power and docking. You won’t find a USB-C port on Microsoft’s latest tablet, which is a shame.

At the same time, the Surface Pro 6 is an outstanding 2-in-1, with support for all the usual input methods. The Type Cover, a $160 keyboard add-on, has a snappy key mechanism and consistent backlighting with a Microsoft Precision touchpad that provides smooth support for the full range of Windows 10 gestures. And then there’s the $100 Surface Pen that offers 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity, tilt support, and the quickest response times around. And, of course, the Pixelsense display is also touch-enabled.

The Surface Pro 6 is not only a better tablet, but it’s also a better laptop. It wins this round handily.

Performance

Mark Coppock/Digital Trends

This HP Envy x2 is actually HP’s Intel version, released alongside a Qualcomm Snapdragon version to offer better performance than the ARM processor could provide. By equipping an Intel Core i5-7Y54, the Envy x2 delivers performance that’s good enough for general productivity and media consumption use and not much more. The Envy x2 won’t be your video editing workstation, and the SATA solid-state drive (SSD) won’t win any storage speed awards either. The limited 4GB of RAM also means that multitasking performance will be limited.

The Surface Pro 6 received an upgrade this time around to Intel’s 8th-gen U-Series processors. The Core i5 and i7 processors are quad-core CPUs supporting eight threads, and they’re both efficient and fast. That means there’s significant power squeezed inside the Surface Pro’s slate that’s good for more demanding productivity tasks. Thanks to the fast PCIe SSD that Microsoft sourced for the Surface Pro 6, this is one fast tablet.

Considering the display, the Surface Pro 6 is again a step above the Envy x2. It uses a 12.3-inch IPS display that’s quite sharp thanks to a 2,736 x 1,824 (267 PPI) resolution, and it’s also productivity-friendly thanks to a 3:2 aspect ratio. HP used a 12.3-inch 1,920 x 1,280 (188 PPI) display that’s not nearly as sharp, and you’ll notice more pixels when you’re staring at text. The Surface Pro 6 also enjoys the significantly higher contrast and brightness, although both tablets have just average color gamuts for premium machines.

The Surface Pro 6 is faster and it sports a much better display. What’s not to like?

Portability

Dan Baker/Digital Trends

Both of these tablets on their own are equally thin and light and thus easy to carry around. Attach their keyboard covers, though, and the Surface Pro 6 is slightly more svelte. Even so, they’re just about lost when tucked inside a backpack, and that’s a good thing. But size and weight are just two factors to weigh when considering portability. Battery life is also important, and here these two tablets are again closely matched.

In our most demanding Basemark web benchmark, the Envy x20 managed over five hours where the Surface Book 2 petered out in less than four hours. Each tablet lasted right around nine and a half hours when browsing the web, and taking those two scores together you’ll likely get slightly more productivity work out of the Envy x2’s battery. But the Surface Pro 6 lasted for a very long 14 hours playing a local video while the Envy x2 shut down after 11 hours — meaning that you’ll get more video binging out of Microsoft’s tablet.

This category is pretty evenly matched, and your choice comes down to whether productivity or media consumption longevity matters more to you.

The Surface Pro 6 doesn’t get much of a challenge

Dan Baker/Digital Trends

The Envy x2 is a relatively affordable tablet if you go by the current sale price of $900 (compared to a retail price of $1,150). That’s for a configuration including a Core i5-7Y54, 4GB of RAM, and a 128GB SATA SSD, and the keyboard cover and pen are in the box.

The Surface Pro 6 is more expensive, starting at $900 for a Core i5, 8GB of RAM, and a 128GB SSD in the Platinum color. However, the Type Cover isn’t included, meaning you’ll spend at least another $130. If you want to ink with the Surface Pen, then you’ll have to budget another $100. If you max out the Surface Pro 6, then you can spend as much as $2,300 on a Core i7, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD.

Yes, the Microsoft Surface Pro 6 is costlier, but the adage “you get what you pay for” applies here. You’re much better off spending the extra money to get a much better detachable tablet.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Microsoft Surface Pro 6 vs. Surface Laptop 2
• Surface Pro 6 vs. Surface Pro 5
• Google Pixel Slate vs. Microsoft Surface Pro 6
• Surface Pro 6 vs. Surface Go
• Microsoft Surface Pro 6: Everything you need to know

5 crazy successful Kickstarters that didn’t live up to the hype

Further reading

How to back crowdfunding projects the right way

Awesome Tech You Can’t Buy Yet

Best crowdfunding projects of 2017

Kickstarter has been a platform for some amazing products, but, obviously, some have fallen flat. What exactly you need to create a successful Kickstarter depends on what you’re selling, but a compelling campaign, great incentives, and solid video are must-haves. Surprisingly, however, some Kickstarter projects have raised millions of dollars to produce products that have garnered less-than-stellar reviews. Below, we’ve rounded up several of most successful Kickstarters that just didn’t deliver in the end.

Yooka-Laylee — $2,680,738 in funding

Yooka-Laylee was a title created by Playtonic Games, the same talent behind the Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong Country games. The campaign brought in more than 73,000 backers and raised nearly $3 million, but once the title was released, it didn’t exactly live up to the hype. Although the visuals were charming and there were a variety of in-game activities, the actual concept was somewhat lackluster. The world design was unimaginative, and the automatic camera didn’t always sync up with the controls. Basically, it was non-progressive nostalgia and little more.

Read our full Yooka-Laylee review

PonoPlayer — $6,225,354 in funding

Neil Young was the brainchild — or at least the figurehead — behind the PonoPlayer, but even the rock icon and a team of world-renowned audio engineers couldn’t save the ambitious music player in the end. The device’s campaign received more than 18,000 backers, most of which were lured in by the promise of high-resolution audio and the accompanying sales platform, PonoMusic. A mere three years after the PonoPlayer came to market, however, PonoMusic shuddered, and Young released a statement in which he blamed the storefront’s downfall on “record companies who thought consumers should pay more for a better quality product.”

Ouya — $8,596,474 in funding

The Ouya was an inexpensive, Android-based video game console funded in 2012. When we reviewed the console upon its release a year later, we commended it for its sleek and attractive design, though we noted how it fell short in its technical execution. The menus and notification system were a mess, and despite its initial potential, cheap peripherals and a sheer lack of compelling games further cemented it as a bonafide dud that was less capable than most smartphones. The Ouya is still around — Razer bought the company in 2015 — but the system isn’t exactly selling as well as, say, the Nintendo Switch. Go figure.

Read our full Ouya review

The Coolest Cooler — $13,285,226 in funding

The Coolest Cooler raised more than 13 million in 2014. It was a portable party disguised as your standard ice chest, and as such, everyone threw money toward it. From the very start, however, there were issues. In 2016, it was announced that nearly two-thirds of the 62,642 backers had yet to receive their product, and the company said it needed an additional $97 from customers in order to fulfill the backlog of orders. The company has now reached a settlement with Oregon that gives it until 2020 to deliver the remaining 20,000 coolers, which, by most accounts, amount to little more than a blender-strapped boxes.

The Pebble — $10,266,845 in funding

The Pebble was a customizable watch that raised more than $10 million in 2012. We commended it upon its release, namely for its robust battery life and crisp LCD display, but it definitely had its faults. When Apple released the apt-titled Apple Watch in 2014, however, those quickly became apparent. Founder Eric Migicovsky sold Pebble’s software and intellectual property to Fitbit for less than $40 million, which meant that most of the backers for the Pebble Time 2 and Pebble Core came up empty handed when the company shut down production. Fitbit’s support for the Pebble ended in June, but if you still want to use your Pebble device, Rebble is now the unofficial spinoff of the Pebble Platform. That’s something, right?

Read our full Pebble review

Editors’ Recommendations

• What the Heacket? This heated jacket is the latest crowdfunding cautionary tale
• Can a bracelet really let you control your dreams?
• Awesome Tech You Can’t Buy Yet: A.I.-powered cat toys, wallets, food containers
• 15 major milestones along the brief history of 3D printing
• Angee’s security service switches from sales to subscriptions

New copyright ruling protects right to repair gadgets and archive video games

Protections for electronics users of all kinds have been passed in an extensive ruling by the Library of Congress that covers technologies as diverse as consumer electronics, farm equipment, 3D printing, and online learning platforms. The ruling prescribes exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a particularly unpopular law among technology fans that was designed to prevent copyright piracy, but ended up causing a range of undesirable side effects from YouTube video takedowns to restricting console modding.

The new ruling specifies what activities are excepted from the DMCA, meaning that these activities will no longer be in danger of infringing on copyright. One of the biggest topics of interest to technology customers is the protection of their right to repair gadgets such as smartphones and tablets when they break. Many consumer electronics come with installed digital rights management (DRM) software, and it was previously illegal for users to get around this DRM to repair or tinker with their device.

Apple is infamous for its aggressive use of DRM and its strong discouragement of users or third parties repairing its devices. The software in Apple devices can check whether a part was installed by approved personnel, and was reported to be bricking devices that were repaired by an unapproved third party.

Now, thanks to the new ruling, both third-party repair companies and individual users have legal backing to circumvent DRM in order to fix a broken device. However, getting around DRM can still be a complex and intimidating process for the average user, as it requires some technical knowledge to get around software blocks. While the ruling does not mean that repair tools will be made available, it does mean that it is at least legal to create your own repair tools.

A second area of interest for tech fans is the protection for archiving historical video games, which has been a concern among many classic gamers. Older games were previously only legally available on obsolete devices, making studying or preserving these games extremely difficult. The new rulings allow archivists to preserve old games by keeping copies of not only the software that runs on a user’s computer, but also the software that runs on company’s servers. This potentially allows the preservation of online games such as Everquest, as well as games from obsolete consoles such as the Dreamcast.

Editors’ Recommendations

• It’s no longer illegal to ‘hack’ your electronics to repair them
• iFixit meddles with a Mac, tests Apple’s block on third-party repairs
• Reddit and Wikipedia criticize EU’s controversial copyright law
• Here’s how and where you can watch the best 4K content
• The best free recording software

These are the largest solar farms in the world

36931392 – solar power for electric renewable energy from the sun, solar farm jackstudio / 123RF Stock Photo

Photovoltaic solar energy is the fastest-growing energy source in the world. Currently China, India, and the US produce the majority of the global solar power, with the Middle East coming on strong. Growth is booming — especially in the deserts of Asia and the Middle East, where huge solar farms are in the process of being built and expanded. To give you a taste of just how rapidly the adoption of solar power is expanding, we’ve profiled five of the largest solar plants currently in operation. Enjoy!

Tengger Desert Solar Park

Largest solar farm in the world

Location: China
Site Area: 43 square kilometers
Output: 1,547 MW

Known as the “Great Wall” of solar power, the Tengger Desert Solar Park is the largest solar farm currently in existence. Located in China’s Tengger Desert, the solar field occupies only 3.25 percent of the arid land in the region.  That might not sound that big, but it’s actually more than 10 times larger than New York’s Central Park, and is capable of producing 1.5 Gigawatts of power, rivaling the power capacity of most nuclear power plants. With plenty of room to expand, we expect Tengger to be a top solar power producer for years to come.

Bhadla Solar Park

Largest solar farm in India

Ecoppia

Location: India
Site Area: 40 square kilometers
Output: 1,365 MW

The Bhadla Solar Park currently produces 1,365 MW, but that is about to change. The facility is expanding rapidly, and has plans to produce an additional 880 megawatts by March of 2019. Once it reaches full capacity next year, Bhadla will claim the title as the largest solar facility in the world and will help India come closer to its goal of obtaining 17% of its energy from solar power.

Longyangxia Dam Solar Park

Renewable hybrid power with solar and hydroelectric

Location: Tibetan Plateau, China
Site Area: 27 square kilometers
Output: 850 MW

Longyangxia Dam Solar Park was completed in 2015 and is integrated with the facility’s 1,280MW Longyangxia hydroelectric dam. Together the two power sources complement each other. Solar power helps to conserve water usage by the dam, while the hydroelectric dam balances out the variable energy production from solar cells.

Villanueva Solar

Largest in North and South America

Location: Coahuila, Mexico
Site Area: 24 square kilometers
Output: 828 MW

The Villanueva solar power facility has been growing steadily with the commissioning of the 427 MW Villanueva 1 park and the 327 MW Villanueva 3 park in early 2018. Enel Green Power Mexico, which oversees the plants, continues to add capacity in small chunks, with a goal of reaching 1,700 GWh per year once the facility is fully operational. This facility is part of Mexico’s commitment to supply 35 percent of its electricity from clean sources by 2024.

Kamuthi Solar Power Station

Largest solar farm in the state of Tamil Nadu

Location: Tamil Nadu, India
Site Area: 10 square kilometers
Output: 648 MW

As of the writing of this post, the Kamuthi Solar Power Station is the sixth largest solar farm in the world. Built in a mere eight months, the plant went online in September 2016. The 2.5 million solar panels at the facility produce enough power for 750,000 people. One cool fact: the facility is cleaned daily by a fleet of robots who are charged by the solar panels they service.

Solar Star Solar Farm

Largest solar farm in the US

Location: Rosamond, California
Site Area: 13 square kilometers (5.0 sq mi)
Output: 580 MW

One of the older plants on our list, construction began on the Solar Star power plant in 2013 and was completed in 2015. The facility includes 1.7 million solar panels that can supply electricity to power the equivalent of approximately 255,000 homes. Solar Star hails from California, which leads the US with almost 23GW in solar energy and accounts for nearly 17 percent of California’s electricity supply.

Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park

Largest planned solar farm under construction

Location: UAE
Site Area: 77 square kilometers
Output: 5,000 gigawatts planned by 2030

The 213MW Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park may pale in comparison to other facilities, but it has big plans for the future. The solar park has planned improvements that are expected to generate 1,000 MW by 2020 and an incredible 5,000 MW by 2030. Not only will it be the largest solar park in the world, but it also will have the world’s tallest solar energy tower. The 260-meter tower is part of phase four of development and will contribute 700MW to the plant’s total output.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Here’s what would happen if the Sahara was covered in solar and wind farms
• New sustainable plan to mitigate climate change involves… a hot dog cooker?
• Elon Musk hints at Tesla-connected smart air conditioning
• NASA’s Parker Solar Probe sets out to try and ‘touch’ the sun
• A series of solar flares disrupted hurricane relief efforts in 2017

Tiny FlyCroTug drones can open doors and pull objects 40 times their weight

Tiny new drones that can pull objects up to 40 times their own weight have been developed by scientists working in the United States and Switzerland. These drones use gripping technology to take hold of an object and to anchor themselves to surfaces in the environment, which means that they can perform complex tasks like lassoing a door handle to open it or delivering bottles of water in a rescue scenario.

The new aerial vehicles measure a few inches across and they represent a huge upgrade in lifting capabilities, as most drones today can only carry twice their weight. The new drones are equipped with winches that can raise and lower objects to allow ease of movement around a busy environment. They can even collaborate with other drones in order to maximize the amount of weight being moved.

Researchers at Stanford University and Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland have worked together to develop the weight-bearing drones, known as FlyCroTugs. The engineers were prompted by nature, taking inspiration from the feet of geckos and the behavior of insects. The idea for the tugging drones was born when Mark Cutkosky, Fletcher Jones Chair in the School of Engineering at Stanford University, and his colleagues considered how insects deal with moving relatively large objects: When a wasp approaches a piece of food that is too heavy to be carried, the wasp will drag it along the ground. This inspired the concept of a drone which transports items much heavier than itself by anchoring to a larger object. The gecko’s feet come into play when the drone must move across a smooth surface, for which they are equipped with 32 tiny metal spikes that latch onto the surface, just like a gecko does when climbing a wall.

An advantage of the small size of the drones is that they can get into tight spaces and can be safely flown close to people. This makes them suited for search and rescue missions, in which they could move debris or place cameras to help rescuers see inside dangerous environments. The next stages that the engineers are working on are autonomous controls and how to coordinate several drones at once.

Dedicated drone enthusiasts can read more about the FlyCroTugs at Science Robotics or see the EPFL’s news story.

Editors’ Recommendations

• This intelligent parachute system can bail out clumsy drone pilots
• 7 Drones that can stay airborne for hours — and the tech that makes it possible
• This quadcopter is a ‘flying battery’ that can stay in the sky for 2 hours
• Death from above? How we’re preparing for a future filled with weaponized drones
• The best drones of 2018

What’s the point of a blockchain phone? We asked an expert

Few technologies have attracted the frenzied level of unbridled hype that has surrounded blockchain over the last couple of years, but the technology is not well understood. Advocates often argue that blockchain goes way beyond cryptocurrency, even though the two are inextricably linked in the public consciousness, but deeper conversations about blockchain typically have a heavy focus on potential.

With HTC’s Exodus smartphone going up for preorder, joining blockchain phones from lesser known names like Sirin Labs and Sikur, we wanted to try and find out what a blockchain phone is, and who might want one? What can it do? And why are companies making them now?

What is a blockchain phone?

“It’s about the internet, where it’s going, and what’s wrong with it right now,” Phil Chen, decentralized chief officer at HTC, told Digital Trends. “Our position is that there’s something deeply wrong right now because people don’t own their digital identities; they don’t own their digital data; they don’t own their personal data. Whether it’s behavioral data, commercial data, health data, browsing data, or something else, all of that is owned by a handful of companies.”

Phil Chen, decentralized chief officer at HTC

We use ostensibly free services from the likes of Google and Facebook with some understanding that they’re not really free — we are trading our data in return for those services. It’s clear that companies with enormous, centralized data hoards are finding ways to monetize that information. In fact, their business models are based on selling insights and targeted advertising.

“It’s about the internet, where it’s going, and what’s wrong with it right now.”

“I find it quite frightening to think that we’re this far into the information age and there’s no concept of digital property,” Chen said. “If you think about the agricultural revolution with real estate property, and the industrial revolution with intellectual property, and we’ve gone this far into the information age and still people don’t think their data is worth anything.”

There’s a growing swell of opinion that’s coming around to the idea that we may have sold ourselves short in giving away all our data. Whether it was an agreement we entered into with open eyes is debatable, and where we go from here is far from clear. But what does all this have to do with a blockchain phone?

Wait a minute, what’s blockchain again?

We’ve looked at what blockchain is before. In brief, it’s an immutable, decentralized ledger. The ledger is a list of transactions, or blocks, that are distributed across a network of different devices, or nodes, instead of being held on a central server. Every user has a private key and a public key which they can use together like a digital signature to create a new block. Each block is verified by the network and then added to the chain. Once added, it cannot be altered.

Additional blockchain guides

Blockchain and gaming — giving gamers control of their loot

Blockchain problems and how to fix them

How governments are using blockchains for good

Protecting election votes with blockchain technology

The HTC Exodus 1 is an Android phone with a secure enclave that allows you to keep possession of your own keys, and potentially your own data, instead of Google, Apple, an exchange, or some other company holding them for you. It’s effectively an Android phone like any other with all the same functionality, but it has this additional locked area that’s protected from Android’s insecurities.

“What we’ve built is like a parallel micro operating system that’s secure,” Chen said. “So, for certain secure transactions, in this case holding your private keys and signing transactions in the crypto space, you use that secure enclave.”

The first application of this is to allow you to hold cryptocurrency or other crypto assets like non-fungible tokens securely, but Chen sees it as the foundation of being able to own and hold your own digital identity and data.

Preventing digital copying

To properly explain one of the potential applications for this kind of technology we’re going to talk about CryptoKitties. Yes, you read that right, bear with us.

“It’s very significant what CryptoKitties have done because it has completely changed the idea of what digital content is,” Chen said. “The concept of non-fungible tokens builds on this idea of digital scarcity.”

CryptoKitties is a blockchain-based game where people can breed, trade, and sell digital cats. The key thing to understand here is that each cat is genuinely unique and can’t be copied, which led to one cat, named Dragon, selling for around $170,000.

Blockchain was originally conceived as a way to prevent double-spending of bitcoin. In simple terms, when I give you a bitcoin, I don’t have it anymore. That’s not usually the case with digital files, because it’s easy to copy a file so that we both have the same file.

“That technology empowered Steve Jobs to disrupt the whole music industry with the iPod and iTunes”

“That technology empowered Steve Jobs to disrupt the whole music industry with the iPod and iTunes,” Chen said. “Non-fungible tokens are building on top of this immutable power of the blockchain, so you can’t copy digital content anymore.”

It potentially gives some intrinsic value or worth back to digital content and it could be applied to a song, a video, or something else just as easily as a digital cat. There’s clearly a big future for blockchain in gaming, especially around digital loot, but there’s no reason it can’t spread beyond that.

“We see it as a completely new paradigm,” Chen said. “Right now, it’s wallet exchanges and gaming collectibles, but we don’t know what killer apps will come out of this.”

What if I lose my phone?

The obvious question that crops up in any discussion of a blockchain phone is what happens if I lose my phone or it gets stolen? Your keys, and possibly eventually your digital data, are physically stored on that device. The HTC Exodus 1 isn’t a cold storage device like Sirin Labs’ Finney blockchain phone, which can also keep your digital currency safely stowed and disconnected from the internet.

“I think demand for cryptocurrency-enabled phones is going to be limited to enthusiasts for the near term, especially devices that have cold storage components to them,” Scotty Perkins, Quisitive’s senior vice president for Product Innovation, told Digital Trends. “If you have coin holdings in cold storage electronically on your mobile phone, you really have to think carefully about what happens if the phone is lost, stolen, or irreparably damaged. Unless you plan carefully, you can lose much more than just the value of the phone and a few contacts.”

HTC has gone for a kind of middle ground, limiting the risk of centralized wealth, but stopping short of completely isolated cold storage.

“There’s no such thing as 100 percent security, there’s always a balance between security and usability,” Chen said. “Right now, all your wealth is online, stored in some centralized server. We are at least spreading the risk with blockchain phones, there’s no one failure point that gives you access to digitally rob 150 million people; if you want to rob someone you have to physically rob them.”

So, what if you do get robbed or you lose your blockchain phone? With a normal phone you can call Google or Apple and run through a recovery process to get the keys to your account back, which will at least restore the data you backed up.

With the decentralized blockchain you have no such recourse, which is why HTC has come up with something it calls Social Key Recovery. Employing a well-known algorithm for sharing, the mechanism splits your key into five different parts, so you can share it among your family and close friends. When you lose your phone, you can call up three out of the five friends to recover it.

Because it’s strictly for recovery, you still need your biometrics or password, so they can’t get together behind your back to access your key and start signing transactions. With cold storage, you need to recover the device, or the assets stored on it are gone forever.

There’s a long way to go

Chen has no illusions about the market for the HTC Exodus 1 today. This is the beginning of something new and no one really knows where it will lead.

“Right now, it’s targeted towards the crypto crowd that really understands what it means to hold your own private keys,” Chen explains “Which is, in fact, not even the majority of crypto users.”

This is the beginning of something new and no one really knows where it will lead.

HTC is looking for help to make the device and system more secure. The plan is to release Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) so third-party developers can use the Exodus 1 to protect keys and sign transactions. There’s no telling what kind of decentralized apps and services might come from this.

The potential of blockchain is undeniably exciting; it could fundamentally change the way we interact with the internet, but you’ve probably heard that before and there are plenty of powerful players with a vested interest in the status quo. For now, blockchain phones are about managing cryptocurrency and some other digital assets. Whether they ever grow beyond that depends on whether blockchain can fulfil that potential. That’s simply impossible to predict right now, but HTC is far from the only player betting that it will.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Here’s everything we know about the HTC Exodus smartphone
• What is a blockchain?
• Crazy vending machine swaps computer art for your permanent selfie
• Cat got your wallet? CryptoKitties virtual feline fetches $170K in crypto cash
• The browser-based Monero miner Coinhive generates around $250,000 each month

What’s the point of a blockchain phone? We asked an expert

Few technologies have attracted the frenzied level of unbridled hype that has surrounded blockchain over the last couple of years, but the technology is not well understood. Advocates often argue that blockchain goes way beyond cryptocurrency, even though the two are inextricably linked in the public consciousness, but deeper conversations about blockchain typically have a heavy focus on potential.

With HTC’s Exodus smartphone going up for preorder, joining blockchain phones from lesser known names like Sirin Labs and Sikur, we wanted to try and find out what a blockchain phone is, and who might want one? What can it do? And why are companies making them now?

What is a blockchain phone?

“It’s about the internet, where it’s going, and what’s wrong with it right now,” Phil Chen, decentralized chief officer at HTC, told Digital Trends. “Our position is that there’s something deeply wrong right now because people don’t own their digital identities; they don’t own their digital data; they don’t own their personal data. Whether it’s behavioral data, commercial data, health data, browsing data, or something else, all of that is owned by a handful of companies.”

Phil Chen, decentralized chief officer at HTC

We use ostensibly free services from the likes of Google and Facebook with some understanding that they’re not really free — we are trading our data in return for those services. It’s clear that companies with enormous, centralized data hoards are finding ways to monetize that information. In fact, their business models are based on selling insights and targeted advertising.

“It’s about the internet, where it’s going, and what’s wrong with it right now.”

“I find it quite frightening to think that we’re this far into the information age and there’s no concept of digital property,” Chen said. “If you think about the agricultural revolution with real estate property, and the industrial revolution with intellectual property, and we’ve gone this far into the information age and still people don’t think their data is worth anything.”

There’s a growing swell of opinion that’s coming around to the idea that we may have sold ourselves short in giving away all our data. Whether it was an agreement we entered into with open eyes is debatable, and where we go from here is far from clear. But what does all this have to do with a blockchain phone?

Wait a minute, what’s blockchain again?

We’ve looked at what blockchain is before. In brief, it’s an immutable, decentralized ledger. The ledger is a list of transactions, or blocks, that are distributed across a network of different devices, or nodes, instead of being held on a central server. Every user has a private key and a public key which they can use together like a digital signature to create a new block. Each block is verified by the network and then added to the chain. Once added, it cannot be altered.

Additional blockchain guides

Blockchain and gaming — giving gamers control of their loot

Blockchain problems and how to fix them

How governments are using blockchains for good

Protecting election votes with blockchain technology

The HTC Exodus 1 is an Android phone with a secure enclave that allows you to keep possession of your own keys, and potentially your own data, instead of Google, Apple, an exchange, or some other company holding them for you. It’s effectively an Android phone like any other with all the same functionality, but it has this additional locked area that’s protected from Android’s insecurities.

“What we’ve built is like a parallel micro operating system that’s secure,” Chen said. “So, for certain secure transactions, in this case holding your private keys and signing transactions in the crypto space, you use that secure enclave.”

The first application of this is to allow you to hold cryptocurrency or other crypto assets like non-fungible tokens securely, but Chen sees it as the foundation of being able to own and hold your own digital identity and data.

Preventing digital copying

To properly explain one of the potential applications for this kind of technology we’re going to talk about CryptoKitties. Yes, you read that right, bear with us.

“It’s very significant what CryptoKitties have done because it has completely changed the idea of what digital content is,” Chen said. “The concept of non-fungible tokens builds on this idea of digital scarcity.”

CryptoKitties is a blockchain-based game where people can breed, trade, and sell digital cats. The key thing to understand here is that each cat is genuinely unique and can’t be copied, which led to one cat, named Dragon, selling for around $170,000.

Blockchain was originally conceived as a way to prevent double-spending of bitcoin. In simple terms, when I give you a bitcoin, I don’t have it anymore. That’s not usually the case with digital files, because it’s easy to copy a file so that we both have the same file.

“That technology empowered Steve Jobs to disrupt the whole music industry with the iPod and iTunes”

“That technology empowered Steve Jobs to disrupt the whole music industry with the iPod and iTunes,” Chen said. “Non-fungible tokens are building on top of this immutable power of the blockchain, so you can’t copy digital content anymore.”

It potentially gives some intrinsic value or worth back to digital content and it could be applied to a song, a video, or something else just as easily as a digital cat. There’s clearly a big future for blockchain in gaming, especially around digital loot, but there’s no reason it can’t spread beyond that.

“We see it as a completely new paradigm,” Chen said. “Right now, it’s wallet exchanges and gaming collectibles, but we don’t know what killer apps will come out of this.”

What if I lose my phone?

The obvious question that crops up in any discussion of a blockchain phone is what happens if I lose my phone or it gets stolen? Your keys, and possibly eventually your digital data, are physically stored on that device. The HTC Exodus 1 isn’t a cold storage device like Sirin Labs’ Finney blockchain phone, which can also keep your digital currency safely stowed and disconnected from the internet.

“I think demand for cryptocurrency-enabled phones is going to be limited to enthusiasts for the near term, especially devices that have cold storage components to them,” Scotty Perkins, Quisitive’s senior vice president for Product Innovation, told Digital Trends. “If you have coin holdings in cold storage electronically on your mobile phone, you really have to think carefully about what happens if the phone is lost, stolen, or irreparably damaged. Unless you plan carefully, you can lose much more than just the value of the phone and a few contacts.”

HTC has gone for a kind of middle ground, limiting the risk of centralized wealth, but stopping short of completely isolated cold storage.

“There’s no such thing as 100 percent security, there’s always a balance between security and usability,” Chen said. “Right now, all your wealth is online, stored in some centralized server. We are at least spreading the risk with blockchain phones, there’s no one failure point that gives you access to digitally rob 150 million people; if you want to rob someone you have to physically rob them.”

So, what if you do get robbed or you lose your blockchain phone? With a normal phone you can call Google or Apple and run through a recovery process to get the keys to your account back, which will at least restore the data you backed up.

With the decentralized blockchain you have no such recourse, which is why HTC has come up with something it calls Social Key Recovery. Employing a well-known algorithm for sharing, the mechanism splits your key into five different parts, so you can share it among your family and close friends. When you lose your phone, you can call up three out of the five friends to recover it.

Because it’s strictly for recovery, you still need your biometrics or password, so they can’t get together behind your back to access your key and start signing transactions. With cold storage, you need to recover the device, or the assets stored on it are gone forever.

There’s a long way to go

Chen has no illusions about the market for the HTC Exodus 1 today. This is the beginning of something new and no one really knows where it will lead.

“Right now, it’s targeted towards the crypto crowd that really understands what it means to hold your own private keys,” Chen explains “Which is, in fact, not even the majority of crypto users.”

This is the beginning of something new and no one really knows where it will lead.

HTC is looking for help to make the device and system more secure. The plan is to release Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) so third-party developers can use the Exodus 1 to protect keys and sign transactions. There’s no telling what kind of decentralized apps and services might come from this.

The potential of blockchain is undeniably exciting; it could fundamentally change the way we interact with the internet, but you’ve probably heard that before and there are plenty of powerful players with a vested interest in the status quo. For now, blockchain phones are about managing cryptocurrency and some other digital assets. Whether they ever grow beyond that depends on whether blockchain can fulfil that potential. That’s simply impossible to predict right now, but HTC is far from the only player betting that it will.

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