Solana Mobile, the company that created the first crypto-ready smartphone, is now set to release a second phone.
According to Solana Mobile, this phone will cost less but will have the same features.
This is good news for Solana mobile. However, considering how difficult it was to sell the previous Saga phone initially, critics have started to wonder:
Is SOL Mobile about to pull another stunt to sell the second phone like they did with BONK and the first?
This new version is set to offer the same features, cost less than the first, and supposedly be an improvement to the Saga 1.
So who knows? Can Solana successfully pull this off?
The original Saga phone was launched in 2023 by Solana Labs and Solana Mobile. The Saga phone was initially designed to be the first of its kind: a mobile platform that allowed crypto enthusiasts to carry a crypto wallet around, in the form of a smartphone.
The Saga phone featured this inbuilt crypto wallet, powered by the SOL blockchain, as well as an Android operating system and an inbuilt dApp store that allowed users to access the Solana network.
The smartphone was initially priced at around $1000 in April 2023 but faced heavy apathy from buyers.
The Saga phones spent months on store shelves, forcing Solana Mobile to reduce the price to $599 in August 2023.
However, things soon changed, when buyers discovered that these Saga phones came with an allocation of BONK tokens.
At the time, BONK was in the middle of its 2023 rally, and these tokens that came with the Saga phone could now be sold for as high as $750.
This meant that users could buy a Saga phone, and then sell the BONK tokens it contained, for a profit of around $150.
Sales skyrocketed so high from here, that SOL Mobile had to implement a "one phone per household" policy.
In the US, the Saga phones had completely sold out by the middle of December, with many buyers even putting up their Saga phones for reselling. Several of them even tried to sell one for $5,000.
As of now, there are only 15,000 Saga phones in circulation, with several of them still selling at these prices on eBay.
Solana Mobile recently announced the launch of a second Saga phone, after the success of the first.
This new phone is expected to have the same basic features as the initial Saga phone, but with different hardware, and a cheaper sales price.
This is an interesting step up, considering how only a few months ago, a popular tech critic called the previous Saga phone "the worst" smartphone produced in 2023.
Solana Mobile announced that the new phone will also run on the SOL blockchain, and support the same apps and services as the previous phone.
There is currently no launch date announced, but what we do know is that the new phone is set to be a vastly different, and maybe even improved version of the original Saga phone.
Overall, can Solana pull this new one off?
Only time will tell. The new phone, if successful, will attract more users to the Solana ecosystem, as well as increase how widely adopted SOL already is.
Solana Mobile hopes that its second phone will be a success and prove that crypto smartphones are not just a niche product, but a genuine and worthwhile alternative to regular smartphones.
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