The Bold Move of the Solana Mobile Phone Venture

Solana has been a Layer 3 blockchain that has been generating a lot of traction in a recent couple of years. The main reason behind that is the fact that so many NFT projects decided to go with it and base their tokens on the same tech. Now, however, the same blockchain and its Solana Labs division decided to reveal completely different projects. It is called SMS and it is a mobile phone platform that comes with a physical Android smartphone. The same marks the first big hardware blockchain project in a long time, not counting physical storage devices and mining rigs.

Yet, it is also a risky undertaking with many unknown parts in the same equation. Initially, the same blockchain and the people behind it teased that their new project had something to do – in some way – with mobile and smartphone technology. However, very few analysts or industry experts could have guessed that they are planning to release an actual smartphone with full standard capabilities and some crypto features as well. But, this is precisely what they did and they did the same in the middle of a vicious Crypto Winter period. The results of that initiative, no matter how it turns out, will be relevant not just for the eventual crypto recovery, but for the entire development of part industry in the period to come.

SMS

Solana decided to present its new project during an event that took place in New York City. Clearly, the name suggested that it will be based on the mobile phone systems and yes, Solana Labs did create a platform for mobile software. The name derives from Solana Mobile Stack or SMS. It is a software kit that offers tools for the development of mobile apps on Android. These will be native setups that will cover things like utility applications and walls, but also constantly more and more important blockchain games. SMS from Solana also introduced a decentralized app store, which is among the first such initiatives in the world.

All of the existing big mobile app stores are basically tied to the big mobile phone producers or software creators. That is why both Google Play and The Apple App Store are linked to these massive companies. SMS will provide something different and instead will offer a decentralized store experience. However, the kicker in the same event was the release of the Solana smartphone based on the Android OS. It is called Saga and it provides a very unique product that has not been seen anytime before in the crypto space. That alone has caught the interest of social media, esports forums, and many other online locations that follow the crypto ecosystem.

Solana’s Saga

The initiative from Solana is not some half-baked concept that is still under intense or lackluster development. Instead, it is a defined and well-shaped product, at least according to Solana Labs, that should hit the market somewhere early next year. That means that less than 10 or nine months are between this point and the appearance of the Solana mobile phone. Officials from the same development team stated that the developers have been working on the product for five months when it comes to just the software side of the operation. The hardware of the same device has been under development for a lot longer than that. The basic idea behind Saga is to improve access to Web 3 services and add additional functionalities.

These should help in the process of aiding crypto user adoption which is presently modest but shows inclinations toward a more widespread growth. The number could one day reach one billion individuals, which is still far below the number of users of regular online and mobile services. For example, presently some 3.9 billion individuals use some form of social media. One billion crypto users are four times lower at the present moment and will be even smaller in the years to come. Yet, that same number is still many times bigger than the number of crypto users right now. Saga is designed to help in that process.

Hardware Presence

The concept of Saga is not just all about Web 3 services. It is also a mechanism that will allow users to blend a software and hardware solution into their crypto safeguards. Saga will act as a hardware wallet and the Solana Labs teams believe that this is the most natural progression of the current setup. At the same time, the device itself and its capabilities will be impressive all on its own. The sizable handset will come with a 6.77-inch OLED display and feature 12GB of RAM and 512GB of internal memory.

It will use a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 processor. All of this adds up to a premium Android device that would fill the top tier of producers like Samsung or Google. At the same time, Solana Labs chose to present it with a degree of minimalism that is most associated with iPhone philosophy. Jokingly, the Solana developers said that it would not be smart to drop the same device, as any breaking of the same will likely cost the owners some 1,000 USD. That is the projected price for the same device.

Big Plans

The Solana Labs team believes that the Saga and SMS setup will be something they could easily port to the iOS ecosystem. Others warn that the regulatory setup and the close nature of the Apple systems might limit that drastically. While the protocols can definitely be ported to the iOS, the company itself could stop things like access to decentralized markets and some other Web 3 services, including things like storing or sending BTC tokens and other crypto functionalities.

However, the team believes that these issues can be resolved, just like the process of porting the SMS services to the PC ecosystem and other mobile environments. All of this allows the Solana blockchain to spread even further but also to establish itself as one of the major developers of cutting-edge cryptocurrency technologies.

Source: Coindesk