Solana Mobile from Solana blockchain developers has announced the second smartphone model with support for crypto applications. Demand for the new device, called Chapter 2, was so high that the company reached its weekly sales goal in the first 24 hours, Raj Gokal, head of Solana Labs, the company behind the Solana ecosystem, told the news.
According to Gokal, in the first 24 hours after the announcement of the smartphone, the company received more than 25 thousand pre-orders, and after another six hours there were already 30 thousand. With such indicators, the new device has already eclipsed the annual sales of the first phone from Solana – Saga.
The new smartphone will have the same characteristics as its predecessor: it runs on Android, has a built-in crypto wallet and a secure key storage for it, as well as a crypto app store. The device is priced at $450, while the Saga retails for $599. According to Gokal, Chapter 2 will be released in the first half of 2025.
Solana’s first smartphone wasn’t in significant demand when it was first released in mid-2023 for $1,000. The company quickly dropped the price to $599, but that didn’t increase demand either. Popular YouTube reviewer Marques Brownlee called the Saga “the worst new phone of 2023” in one of his videos.
Solana Saga’s Stellar Surge: Wallet Tokens Fuel Sell-Out Success
The developers were preparing to abandon Saga altogether, but the situation changed dramatically in December, when crypto traders realized that the device’s built-in wallet as a promo contained several tokens on the Solana network, including Bonk (BONK), which from October to December 2023 year, the price soared almost a hundredfold. At a high rate, the free tokens in the device’s wallet paid for its cost many times over. In less than a week, all Saga devices from the official website were sold out, and on the secondary market they were sold at prices ranging from $2 thousand to $5 thousand.
Rising Bonk Token Spurs Interest in Solana Smartphones
Bonk is a namecoin that runs on the Solana blockchain and uses a Shiba Inu dog as a mascot, just like the largest meme cryptocurrencies Dogecoin (DOGE) and Shiba Inu (SHIB). The token was released at the beginning of 2023, and a short-term excitement immediately arose around it, after which its rate decreased until the end of October, before starting to grow rapidly. The trigger for the rise in its price could have been the rise in the price of the Solana blockchain token (SOL), which provoked interest in assets in this network, including BONK itself.
Several developers of crypto services in the Solana ecosystem have already announced the distribution of tokens in the form of an airdrop to smartphone owners, which has probably become the main factor in the hype around the devices.
