By Ronald Samonte
May 12, 2023
Solana Saga - Web3 SmartPhone
If you're into cryptocurrency, there is a high chance that you already know Solana. In fact, Solana has one of the biggest market caps for Alt coins and at one time was being traded near $250 level before the Terra Luna incident. Solana Labs announced last 2022 of making a smartphone that would cater to cryptocurrency users. Actually, it was HTC the first company to have released a smartphone that supports cryptocurrency blockchain transactions. The HTC Exodus 1 was released last 2020 and perhaps like many of HTC's famous products it was rather ahead of its time. And here we are in 2023 Solana Labs has finally released its first smartphone - Solana Saga. The Saga was designed by the team at OSOM who was also responsible for the Essential Phone.
A crypto trader or NFT holder top concern is security. Although most of the major cryptocurrency blockchain are secured and supposed to be hack proof, some bad things can happen. It's very important for every crypto holder to secure his/her assets by means of a cold wallet or a hot wallet. Hot wallet or software wallet like MetaMask, Phantom and Coinbase Wallet are just a few of the popular wallets. Ledger and Trezor are some of the more widely used cold wallets.
According to Solana the Saga is designed with both hardware and software built from the ground up. This means that the integration of both software and hardware provides a more secure and isolated environment that not even the android OS have access to. The differentiating feature of the Saga is the Seed Vault and Solana Mobile Stack. Instead of making the transaction from your cold or hot wallet, Seed Vault connects to your favorite wallet app (ex. Phantom) without exposing your private keys. When Phantom asks for authentication just need to sign-in using the phone fingerprint sensor and just like that the transaction is completed. Thus, the Seed Vault use a secured biometric sign-in and protect the private key with AES encryption. The integration of the Solana Mobile Stack to the Saga paves the way for mobile decentralize apps(dApps) development. At launch day some 21 dApps is available at Solana's dApps Store such as Magic Eden, Audius, Dialect, Genopets and others. Solana is also rewarding early Saga purchasers of a Welcome Pack - 20USDC, 0.01SOL, and opportunity to mint Clayno NFT.
With the launch of the Saga, Solana is betting that Web3 based smartphones with decentralized apps support would further accelerate the cryptocurrency adoption into the mobile ecosystem level. This move can also influence major mobile brands to follow Solana's lead which should be a good thing for the crypto market.
Finally, the specs of the device below. The spec of the Saga is flagship level with a powerful Qualcomm processor, generous internal storage and RAM.
Specs:
Snapdragon 8+ Gen1
50MP and 12MP ultrawide plus 16MP selfie
Ceramic back, stainless steelframe w/ titanium accents
6.67 FHD Amoled screen
12GB LPDDR5
512GB storage
Rear finger print sensor
4110 mAh battery
Qi wireless charging compatible
IP68 rating
Image courtesy of Solana
The Saga cost around $1,000 which seems on the expensive side and is on pre-order at Solana Mobile. Having a Web3 mobile device infuse with a Seed Vault that secures and protect your transactions and a growing decentralized apps store is an exciting experience indeed as even the top of the line android phones does not have these special features.