Solana (SOL) is planning to have its blockchain phone. It aims to have a new crypto-native phone to be developed by the smartphone maker Osom.
Solana Labs, the company behind the Solana blockchain, discloses it’ll launch an android smartphone for the Solana network. It wants to ship the phone to the market in early 2023.
This is far from the first blockchain phone to be announced since blockchain technology and Crypto became known in 2017.
What about other blockchain phones that have been released? What happened to them, and did the phones deliver on their aims and promises?
HTC Exodus
HTC, the smartphone maker, announced in 2018 that it’s venturing into Crypto with an Exodus phone. And it could double as a Crypto hardware wallet.
The phone, which comes with a separate micro-operating system that runs parallel with Android, is among the “made ‘crypto phones.”
The phone is still for sale!
Pundi X’s XPhone
The second on the list is Pundi X’s XPhone. It’s a smartphone designed by Pundi X, a crypto payment company in Singapore.
The firm’s smartphone seems to be a dead project. There’s little or no information on the phone since the initial release in 2018.
Sirin Labs’ Finney phone
This is one of the first companies to announce a blockchain-based phone, called after the cryptographer and Bitcoin (BTC) pioneer Hal Finney.
Although the token price has collapsed from its peak in 2018, the Finney phone remains for sale across the Sirin shops.
Sirin Labs, the Switzerland company behind the phone, has launched the phone’s updated version in June 2021.
Samsung KlaytnPhone
This phone is from Samsung, powered by Kakao subsidiary Ground X’s Klaytn blockchain platform. It was a special limited edition of Samsung’s Galaxy Note 10 phone tablet.
According to the phone’s website, KlaytnPhone is “the first and only smartphone that offers an easy and seamless experience for users interacting with iGaming platforms and blockchain-powered services.”
KlaytnPhone permits its users to “experience an all-in-one blockchain ecosystem from token to wallet to blockchain application.”
The phone is still available but only for South Korean customers.
Huobi-affiliated Acute Angle phone
In 2019, the Crypto exchange Huobi in partnership with Whole Network announced a blockchain phone.
The phone development, dubbed Acute Angle, is funded via the sale of Whole Network’s NODE tokens on Huobi.
However, since 2019, there hasn’t been any information published by Huobi or Whole Network on the phone status.
Today, the Whole Network’s website isn’t accessible, and its Twitter account hasn’t shared any information since 2019.