Media: Solana Labs will release a cheaper model after the success of its debut Saga Web 3.0 smartphone

What’s new? Solana Mobile, a subsidiary of blockchain developer Solana, plans to release a second Web 3.0 smartphone model, CoinDesk reports, citing an anonymous source. The new device, like the debut smartphone Saga, will offer users a built-in crypto wallet and marketplace of decentralized applications (DApps) and will run on Android. However, it will differ from its predecessor in technical specifications and lower cost.

CoinDesk’s material

What else is known? The first Saga model was announced in June 2022. The device’s functionality is tightly integrated with the Solana blockchain, enabling secure Web 3.0 transactions and management of digital assets, including cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The smartphone supports the Solana Mobile Stack toolkit, enabling the creation of DApps.

It features a 6,67-inch OLED display, 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage space. It is built on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset. Production was handled by Android development company OSOM, whose team has extensive experience building computing hardware for Google, Apple, and Intel.

Saga went on sale in 33 countries on January 20, 2023 at a price of $1000. Almost a year later, in early December, Solana Labs co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko said that only 2200 devices had been sold. According to him, at least 25-50 thousand sales are needed to create a major user base

However, Saga’s popularity soon increased dramatically as the BONK “dog” meme token team launched airdrop among smartphone owners, and the asset showed tremendous growth at that time. In Q4, for example, BONK became the top yield growth leader among all coins with 7547%, allowing it to go into plus territory after the Saga acquisition, which resulted in all smartphones being sold out in less than a week.

Other projects in the Solana ecosystem have also started launching asset giveaways exclusively for Saga owners. The average cost of devices on the secondary market is currently at $3200, up five times in five weeks.