Last year, Solana (SOL) launched its own smartphone called “Sage”. After a difficult start, this phone suddenly became very popular; so popular that there were already plans for a new model. The pre-order phase has now begun and Solana Mobile’s first sales target has already been reached.
New Solana phone reaches pre-order goal
Solana Mobile launched a pre-order page called “Chapter 2” earlier this year, where the organization says it wants to pre-sell at least 100,000 phones to even begin development. The smartphone should then be available in the first half of 2025. The device apparently costs $450, making it significantly cheaper than its predecessor. When it was introduced, it cost $1,000.
Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko told CoinDesk that it will be easier to set up development and production this time. Monday marked the hundred thousandth pre-order, which brought the developers $45 million in financing.
There are already big plans for the device. One of the standout features of the original Saga phone is the integration of decentralized applications (dApps) built on the Solana blockchain. This has some potential and the developers are aware of it.
Solana Mobile calls for pre-orders to “counter the app store duopoly”. This refers to Apple’s AppStore and Google’s Play Store, which together control almost the entire mobile app market. The developers hope to be able to keep up with the big players with this special feature.
Competitors like Apple and Google invest a lot of time, money and effort into features like the camera, making it difficult to compete on these counts. Special crypto functions should not be easily available on competing devices. Additionally, the Solana App Store does not charge 20-30% commissions from developers like Apple and Google do.
The Solana Saga smartphone is still a huge success
The first device achieved great success in fits and starts. For example, major security issues were discovered late last year that theoretically allowed hackers to completely empty the built-in hardware wallet.
Shortly afterwards it was announced that sales figures were very disappointing, although this was apparently partly due to the high price. Solana itself denies that there is even a security problem.
Nevertheless, the Saga cell phone was also a great success in December. Buyers are entitled to an airdrop of 30 million BONK tokens. This memecoin rose enormously in December, after which the built-in wallet was worth more than the phone itself. As a result, they suddenly sold like hotcakes.
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