On June 23, the CEO of Solana Labs, Anatoly Yakovenko, announced in New York the launch of a software development kit for Web3 programs called “Solana Mobile Stack (SMS),” as well as the delivery date of its new crypto phone: The “Saga.”
According to Yakovenko, Solana’s new smartphone will cost approximately $1,000 and will be available for purchase early next year. The phone’s flagship specs will put it on par with the big brands in the industry. It will have a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 processor, a 6.67″ OLED display, 12GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage.
The smartphone will feature a Web3 decentralized app store (Dapps), a mobile wallet called “Solana Pay,” created to facilitate transactions via QR codes, and a “seed vault” that will securely store the phone’s private keys.
Solana Labs is accepting $100 deposits from anyone who wants to participate in the pre-sale. Those interested will receive an NFT pass via email when the time comes; however, Solana developers will be prioritized.
Raj Gokal, one of the co-founders of Solana, said that with these tools, “developers can now bring the power of Solana to the computers in our pockets,” so this new phone could potentially revolutionize the mobile industry.
“Solana can revolutionize so much of what we do everyday, but we need to open the possibilities for decentralized apps on our mobile devices in order for this potential to be realized.”
Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange platform and Solana sponsor, said the crypto phone industry was way behind despite the fact that “everything is going mobile,” so the best solution to keep up in this technological age is “is having the actual wallet built into your phone.” Something that apparently only Solana is working on.
Although Saga is not the first crypto-centric smartphone, Solana’s Saga phone could become the most successful of its kind, thanks to the number of developers working on the project, as opposed to its competitors. Besides Solana’s Saga phone, other important initiatives were the Exodus line by HTC, the Finney phone by Sirin Labs or Samsung’s KlaytnPhone.
As Yakovenko said, “We live our lives on our mobile devices,” so a phone with these features will serve to open the doors to the whole world of technology and innovations offered by the Web3.
