According to a source with knowledge of the situation, Solana Mobile intends to release a second smartphone in an attempt to capitalize on the improbable success of its first crypto-ready device.
The next phone will be more affordable and have different hardware than its predecessor, the Saga, but it will have the same fundamental features, such as an onboard cryptocurrency wallet, customized Android software, and a “dApp store” for cryptocurrency applications. In response to weak sales, the original phone’s $1000 price tag was later lowered. It was first released last year.
With the severely limited supply of current Saga smartphones, there is a growing secondary market that could be suppressed with the help of the new Solana Mobile phone. Five times its price from five weeks ago, a factory-sealed Saga device was fetching bids of $3,200 on eBay as of the time of publication.
At that time, the supporters of Saga were getting ready to part with their experimental phone. The phone aimed to establish a mobile-only platform for cryptocurrency traders and NFT collectors, but it was unable to find a significant enough market to support its continued existence.
This quickly changed, though, when cryptocurrency traders discovered that the phone included a quantity of BONK tokens that more than compensated for the device’s cost. The Saga ran out of stock in less than a week.
The following month, Saga phones kept paying off for their owners as a number of projects airdropped profitable tokens and NFT to the 15,000 phones that were out in the wild. The Saga community has grown stronger as a result of those airdrops, and more Solana developers are considering creating mobile apps.
