- Today, we're checking out
the new Solana Saga mobile phone,
which is one of the first Web3-focused mobile devices,
built on the Solana blockchain.
Now, even though we are very much still in a crypto and NFT
bear market, even if you're not a fan of Web3, NFTs,
or even any crypto in general,
I think this phone is a very interesting play
to see how blockchain tech can be built into mobile,
especially with Solana creating their own platform for devs
called the Solana Mobile Stack.
But first, before we get into it,
let's unbox it and check it out.
So, here it is.
Are you ready for the peel?
(gentle electronic beats)
Whoa! I almost dropped it.
So, you have the Solana logo.
We also have a fingerprint sensor on the back.
We have two cameras here on the rear,
and we have one camera here on the front.
I like the little green buttons here.
Actually, it's more like a teal color.
Looks nice.
It's a great accent.
Let's see what else is in the box.
We've got a sim card ejector.
Oh, we have a seed-phrase card. Very important.
This is our recovery sheet.
So, before we get into what makes this phone different,
let's go over some of the normal things
that we usually cover when we're reviewing phones.
It has a 50 megapixel main,
a 12 megapixel, ultra-wide camera,
and a 16 megapixel selfie camera.
The display is a 16.67, full HD plus,
and LED with a peak refresh rate of 120 hertz.
It's got a rear fingerprint sensor, dual sim,
12 gigs of ram, 512 gigs of storage.
It's running a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 processor,
and it has a 4,011 milliamp battery.
And, it looks like I have already smudged it up.
So, on the first inspection, I've already fingerprinted
it up, but I love the material, like,
this feels like a premium phone, like,
just the weight of it in my hand.
I sometimes don't really like light phones,
because I feel like I'm not holding anything.
It's also not too slippery.
Even like the new Samsung S23, and the iPhone
feels so slippery, like this, I mean,
it'll definitely slip outta my hands,
but it doesn't feel as slippery as some of the newer phones.
I do also like that it has the fingerprint sensor here
on the back.
It's like a perfect placement
for if you're trying to unlock your phone.
Let's turn it on.
Oh look, the little Solano logo!
This is exciting.
Add our fingerprint.
There we are. "Fingerprint has been added."
"Seed vault, secure seed storage at your fingertips."
We're gonna create a new seed.
We can't let you see it.
We're gonna protect our seed with a passcode.
Seed passcode. Let me go write this down.
So, I've written down my seed phrase, I've hit it away.
Now, I need to enable fingerprint access
to the seed in my seed vault.
So, we're gonna enable, and here we go.
Okay, my seed has been created and secured.
"In order to use your seed, pair it with a wallet," okay.
All right, I use the Phantom Wallet.
So, the thing that I also like is this has a dApp store,
which is an entire app store
dedicated to decentralized apps.
And, since this still is early, there's not a lot,
"allow Solana," okay, yes.
"claim our saga and gen."
Okay, saga Genesis, oh my goodness.
All right, connectable.
Okay, so many things are happening right now.
I typed in my 24-word seed phrase, again, get started!
So, here's the dApp store, and it's asking to authenticate,
and we're in.
See, so, we've got, all right this is a brand new account.
We don't have any Solana or anything yet.
Alright, it's all set up.
Definitely excited to test this out further.
Now, one of the problems that I've run into,
and if you are also into NFTs or crypto,
is how difficult and not secure things are
to transact on mobile.
Now, most of the time you do need a desktop,
or you need to have a wallet app browser,
and it's super frustrating to try to navigate,
and it's also not entirely secure.
Now, I mostly use a cold storage hardware wallet
for a lot of my larger transactions,
which adds another entire layer of complication to things,
especially if I don't have my ledger with me.
Now, what I do like about the Saga,
is that they're introducing a seed vault.
So, your salon of private keys and seeds are stored securely
protected by a dedicated hardware security module,
called a secure element.
Now, when you're using any decentralized apps,
their mobile wallet adapter can be used
for signing transactions.
Keys and seeds are only used to sign transactions.
So, your keys are never actually shared with Solana apps,
or Android, to keep you safe.
Now, I did show you guys the dApp store,
where you'll have access to, hopefully, a growing number
of decentralized apps in the future.
As you can see, right now it's pretty slim.
Now, this is running on the Solana blockchain
and I still feel like there's a lot of questions
that a lot of people have,
if you're not familiar with this,
or you haven't been following it.
So, blockchain tech is a way of storing,
and transferring data that is secure, transparent,
and decentralized.
Now, because the blockchain creates a permanent record
of transactions, they can't be deleted or altered.
So, this reduces the risk of fraud.
Now, this isn't to say that there aren't a ton of NFT scams
out there, because there are tons of them,
there's lots of crypto scams, but a lot of that
does not have anything to do with the blockchain technology,
specifically.
That's just because people are very crafty,
and know how to scam their way in and out of your wallets.
I like this because you actually own your assets,
and you can transfer or sell them if you want.
I kind of think of this, when I was playing Animal Crossing,
for my entire island that I've spent 1700 hours
playing, and building,
if that was something that was on the blockchain,
I would be able to easily transfer that entire island,
to someone else, or all of those items that I have
inside of my island, I could actually be selling those
to you, or to whoever wants them.
And, each one of those assets wouldn't just be something
that I would have in the game.
It would be something that I physically, well digitally,
owned, and would be able to do whatever I wanted with them.
Now, if there was some other game
that was on that particular blockchain
that also decided to share those same assets
I could then take those assets into, I don't know,
for example, if it's Call of Duty,
I could maybe take some of my wardrobe,
the outfits that I had made or created in Animal Crossing,
or purchased, and I could wear them in Call of Duty.
Like, a lot of this, yes, it can be done using other tech,
not on the blockchain.
And, it has been done, as we've all seen
in a way more centralized way.
There's a lot of pros and cons to both,
but we are getting so way off-topic of the Solana phone
that I don't even know where this video is going.
So, while I think that this is very interesting,
and as a very long time holder of Solana,
I really, really hope that it continues to prevail,
and I hope that my bags will get pumped,
because I had bought Solana super early,
when it was very, very low, but then I also bought it
at an all-time high.
So, it definitely cuts pretty deep when I look at
(baby cries) the current charts
of where Solana is now.
With the FTX crash, this ultimately hurt the entire
financial industry in so ways, especially Solana,
since it was Alameda's second largest holding.
At this point, I am just going to continue to hold.
So, I'm going to be either going up with this ship,
or I'm gonna be going down with it.
I even originally had plans to launch
my own project on Solana,
because the appeal originally was the low transaction fees,
and it being a much more environmentally chain,
than any from we knew at the time.
But then, the entire crypto crash happens,
and then I ended up never doing anything with it.
It's called jpig. You guys can follow along if you want to.
I have the Instagram jpig.farm,
and I also have the Twitter jpig.
I definitely do still have plans to launch it.
I probably was working on it for about four months,
just drawing and illustrating. (giggles)
So, one of these days I do plan on launching jpig.
It's just a fun passion project,
and I think it was one of those things
that I wanted to learn how to make generative art.
So, I taught myself Procreate,
figured out how to actually merge all of the layers,
and export those into a final project
to be able to generate a 10,000 pig project,
where every one is so different.
So, it was really fun.
And, the reason that I was so into Solana is, like I said,
there are low transaction fees.
A lot of ETHERA projects, like,
you were paying so much in gas fees,
that you were just wasting money at the end of the day.
So, even if you hate NFTs, or you hate crypto,
that's totally fine,
but I did just kind of wanna show you this phone,
and to just kinda give you a first look
at something different that's out there.
So, having a device like this, that is Web3,
and crypto focused, I think is really interesting.
Now, is this a great time to be launching
a Crypto Solana phone?
I don't know about that, but the fact that it is out,
and it is something that is here,
I will be interested to see
what developers are currently working on with this.
So anyway, I just wanted to give you guys a first look
at the Solana phone.
It will be out very shortly,
and this was announced well, way before the crypto crash.
So, I do feel like had this been released
a little bit earlier,
I think that more people would've definitely been into it.
So, I'm very excited, though, to see, kind of,
what people think.
Like, is this something that you would purchase?
It is a pretty high price point.
This is about a thousand dollars phone.
But, I do think this is something that is kind of early.
I don't think it's gonna be widely adopted right now.
We're still struggling to get people to set up any
any type of decentralized wallet.
So, the fact that there's a phone dedicated to that,
I mean that's gonna be a whole other step.
We're not ready for this.
I mean, I'm ready for it.
I don't think the general public is ready for it,
but I would love to hear what you guys think.
So, feel free to leave me some comments below,
and lemme let you think of the Solana Saga,
or even a crypto Web3 phone, in general.
Thank you guys for watching.
If you have any other questions,
feel free to leave me some questions in the comments,
or feel free to send me some tweets on Twitter,
and I will try to answer them for you.
(upbeat electronic music)