A leek who can't comment on mobile phones is not a good web3 researcher.
As a web3 researcher who has not fully grasped the data on the chain, I never thought that one day I would evaluate mobile phones. The concept of web3 mobile phones is similar to the concept of handheld computers back then. Mobile phone + web3 seems to be a suitable pair, but it is a bit weird. In a big way, it is an epoch-making product such as the Internet turning to the mobile Internet. In a small way, it is Add some web3 hardware and software to an ordinary mobile phone. Today, when web3 has not been fully accepted by the world, web3 mobile phones have added more possibilities to web3, and of course there are still uncertainties.
In any case, any new thing is born in resentment and grows in doubt until no one can live without it. So we might as well carefully study the whole picture of web3 mobile phones. What if it becomes a turning point in the history of mass-adoption? Okay, as usual, we start researching from the earliest web3 mobile phone, wait, the earliest web3 mobile phone is actually Metavertu, a half-dead old money manufacturer like Vertu? Forget it, web3 is a weird world, just get used to it. However, in order to improve the rigor of the research, we still need to clarify the panorama of the web3 mobile phone market first, and then. . . Besides.
Panorama of web3 mobile phone market
The web3 mobile phone market is a typical emerging market, characterized by non-uniform standards, chaotic prices, non-mainstream manufacturers, and uneven user experience. However, through the horizontal comparison of various mobile phones, some clues can still be observed.
figure 1
As shown in Figure 1, there are currently five major web3 mobile phones, and the first three can really meet the basic requirements of web3 native. Therefore, it is difficult to summarize the regular development trend at this stage. In any case, we still have to analyze the development logic behind some unobvious trends:
1. Manufacturers generally prefer manufacturers outside the first tier . In fact, this is not difficult to understand, nothing more than because the web3 mobile phone is a product with too much uncertainty. Mobile phone manufacturers have standardized R&D plans and production requirements, and are unlikely to enter the market quickly because of the new concept of web3+ mobile phones. At the same time, the mobile phone factory is still in the competition of the software ecosystem, and from the perspective of web3 mobile phone software, the factory needs to cut off its own arm, and the use of web3 OS, dapp Store, and DID will destroy the The product of the self-operated ecosystem is completely illogical from the perspective of return on investment. On the other hand, the web3 mobile phone itself is a combination of grotesque and grotesque. It is a combination of small and medium-sized manufacturers that are taking a differentiated route. Of course, it is not ruled out that web3 mobile phones will form a bottom-up reverse growth trend in the future. .
2. The basic configuration of the web3 mobile phone is at the upper-middle level. This is not difficult to understand. The main concept of web3 mobile phone is web3 integration, rather than competition in configuration. Even if some mobile phone functions are added to the cold wallet, I believe it will be a brand-new product. Of course, the METAVERTU and Solana Saga two top-end mobile phones adopt the processor configuration close to the top of the current Android phones, and are equipped with relatively strong camera and storage functions, which can reach the first-line mobile phone level. The configurations of the remaining companies are quite different, similar to randomly cobbled together a configuration that basically meets the middle level. But to be honest, any user who pursues configuration is unlikely to buy any web3 mobile phone, and web3 degens should have at least one common main machine, so the configuration of web3 mobile phones is basically "Meat is tasteless, but it's a pity to discard it".
3. The software layer of the web3 mobile phone is mainly composed of dapp store, wallet and DID. This involves a very important issue: the technological development path of web3 mobile phones, whether it is the fusion model of OS+dapp store at the software level, or the cold wallet+Blockchain SIM card at the hardware level. ? We will discuss this issue later on. Purely from the software level, the current popular web3 integration method is to build a built-in dapp store or curated dapps to improve the friendliness of dapp acquisition, and then use wallets and DiD to build a relatively private domain and a safe operating environment. Add some identity confirmation functions using mobile phone cameras, fingerprint recognition, face recognition, etc., and finally add some welfare games such as NFT airdrops. In addition, Solana Saga has also developed a Solana Mobile Stack that facilitates the development of web3 dapps, and provides some toolkits for dapps developed in the Android environment. The real effectiveness of this set of web3 combos needs to be judged in combination with the actual user experience, and an ultimate question should be considered: whether to install a general web3 OS on any mobile phone or use a pre-set single ecological web3 system better?
4. The hardware layers of Web3 mobile phones have their own advantages and disadvantages. METAVERTU adopts a dual-chip mode to improve the security of the execution environment, which means adding a Snapdragon A5-level security chip. The specific working principle is simply: based on TEE (Trusted Execution Environment) + SE (Secure Element) to establish an isolation environment isolated from the main chip, and at the same time can interact with the original system through API, similar to The ancestor of bank-level security hardware - USB-Shield. This dual-chip security solution is obviously based on the basics, but the actual operation effect needs to be verified. Look at Solana Seed Vault again, its essence is a set of encrypted information hosting software that stores information in a secure environment on local hardware, which is a compromise between software and hardware. The early Finney Phone simply added a whole set of hardware wallets, and used a physically encrypted safe screen (similar to a slide to unlock) for additional protection, but it seems that it has not received much attention so far. In general, there is room for web3 mobile phones to be combined in terms of hardware, including the bsim card (which stores the private key in the sim card) released by China Telecom some time ago, which is an innovative hardware security solution. As a link between physical hardware and the digital world, mobile phones seem to reflect more value than software.
5. There is currently no standard for the price of Web3 mobile phones. Judging from the exaggerated price range of $3350 (the minimum configuration of Metavertu) to $376, the current market positioning of web3 mobile phones is still in a period of confusion. From the horizontal comparison of price gradients, web3 mobile phones currently have at least three types of positioning: high-end cool phones, backup phones for web3 experts, and non-mainstream phones. From a relatively rigorous analysis, we need to judge whether the main application scenario of web3 mobile phones in the future is the main phone or the backup phone. As the main machine, Solana Saga is the closest. However, according to several public practical evaluations, Solana Saga is not up to the standard of the first-line main machine in terms of UI smoothness and configuration enrichment. As a backup mobile phone, Solana Saga and several other low-cost web3 mobile phones seem to be able to meet it, but is the original intention of the web3 mobile phone to be a backup mobile phone? At the same time, the single Solana and Polygon ecology as a backup machine cannot fully meet the basic needs of web3 experts. Therefore, there are only two ways for the positioning of web3 mobile phones in the future: gradually grow to meet the basic general needs of web3 and be infinitely close to the general needs of main mobile phones; or gradually become a mobile phone A niche, grassroots or even eliminated product.
Through the above analysis, we found that the current web3 mobile phone needs to solve several problems: one is the reasonable collocation of hardware and software and the optimal adaptation solution; Third, the positioning between the main machine and the backup machine is more clear.
The technical path of web3 mobile phone
The technical path of web3 mobile phones is nothing more than developing in three fields: hardware, OS software, and Dapp software. web3 hardware wallet and mobile phone can be combined into a "hard + hard" combination solution, while Web3 OS and Dapp can interact with the chain (including wallet encryption) through light nodes or third-party nodes, and realize mobile The purpose of running web3 on the machine.
✦ Hardware path of web3 mobile phone
From the current attempts of web3 mobile phone hardware, it can be roughly divided into the first-generation solution of hardware wallet + mobile phone that will appear around 2018, and the solution of sim card + mobile phone and chip + mobile phone that will appear around 2022. The second-generation solution (in fact, the essence of the hardware wallet is also a chip), as shown in Figure 2.
figure 2
Let’s look at the first-generation solution first. HTC Exodus 1 and Finney Phone launched web3 mobile phones with their own hardware wallets and some simple operating software at the end of 2018. If the author remembers correctly, the end of 2018 should be the bottom of the last round of bear market. From this release time, you can roughly feel the unprofessional understanding of Web3 by the two manufacturers, and their mobile phone sales are almost non-existent. any disturbances.
Judging from the promotional materials of HTC Exodus 1 in those years, the machine is pre-installed with a Zion App that manages hardware wallets (chips) to achieve private key storage, ERC-20 and ERC-721 tokens similar to ordinary hardware wallets The payment and remittance functions, and the basic software such as Brave browser and market software are pre-installed, and the so-called web3 mobile phone solution is completed. On the other hand, Finney Phone is relatively more innovative, with an additional Safe Screen component, as shown in Figure 3. That is to say, when you need to use a hardware wallet, you need to physically toggle the safe screen, so that the phone will disconnect from the external network and keep the operations in the wallet in a safe environment.
image 3
The retro nature of this design reminds me of the physical keyboard of Blackberry. Although it is easy to use and solves some problems simply and crudely, it still cannot resist the trend of technology. The same is true for web3 mobile phones. Although the first-generation solution provides a set of basic solutions, problems such as retro design, incompatibility with existing systems, and smoothness of the UI are all facing trends. Serious challenge for torrents.
Let's look at the second generation solution. METAVERTU adopts the TEE+SE security environment based on another independent chip and switching OS, and the BSIM+ mobile phone solution based on the blockchain sim card (BSIM) jointly launched by China Telecom and Conflux It is also a new path of hardware technology.
The TEE+SE independent chip trusted execution environment technology adopted by METAVERTU is relatively reliable without bragging. TEE technology has been forming standards and specifications since the 1990s. It is an independent hardware execution environment that can only be accessed through a private key, and the hash state is recorded before and after execution to ensure that the execution process There is no problem in or there is evidence to follow after a problem occurs. At the same time, the data in the environment is additionally encrypted with SE, so even if the operating system is exploited, it can still provide the last layer of protection for the data in the environment. Therefore, under the premise that the information before entering the executable environment is correct, the execution process is relatively safe, similar to a hardware wallet. However, there are still two problems with this technology: First, the cost is too high. The computing power and storage space required for the execution environment determine the demand for the chip level , and the Snapdragon chip like METAVERTU will increase the price. As high as more than 3,000 US dollars (although there are also reasons for the premium of the brand itself), this is extremely unfavorable for massadoption. Second, this TEE method is more suitable for security protection in relatively closed systems such as banks . If you need to connect the entire web3, especially when it comes to MPC and Oracles that need to interact with a large amount of external data, you need to More complete privacy computing and customized smart contract-related infrastructure to ensure the efficiency, privacy, security and scalability of data from outside to inside and from inside to outside.
The basic principle of the BSIM card is to increase the storage space and computing power of the SIM card by dozens of times, and realize the generation and storage of the user's public and private keys in the card. According to the official explanation, "BSIM cards can reduce the risk of malware attacks by using hardware security protection technology, and can also realize the binding of digital identities and real identities through the mobile phone number real-name system. In addition to basic private key management In addition to digital signatures, BSIM cards can also implement operations such as encrypted storage and key retrieval, and can even integrate traditional USB-Shield functions in the card.” And aren’t these functions the basic functions that hardware wallets solve? In other words, the BSIM card basically provides the ability to run the two web3 wallets and DIDs on mobile phones. Samsung once cooperated with Ledger to develop the ledger live APP to connect ledger to the mobile phone through bluetooth, so as to realize the capability of web2+web3. And when the future BSIM card becomes a more popular paradigm, the ability to realize web2+web3 with a single mobile phone is obviously a more attractive and imaginative solution.
It is worth mentioning that when I searched for BSIM-related materials, at least 50% of the information discussed the development potential of BSIM in Africa, which is unexpected and reasonable. First of all, the BSIM card effectively solves the confusion of the African banking system and the legal currency system. Compared with Alipay and PayPal, which thrive in an environment with a sound financial system, Africa's own imperfect financial system has brought an excellent soil for web3 payments. According to the World Bank, by 2021, only 53% of citizens over the age of 15 in sub-Saharan Africa will have bank accounts or mobile payment software based on bank accounts. Therefore, when the BSIM card provides web3 infrastructure + encrypted currency as payment equivalent + KYC on the personal chain + mobile payment based on mobile phones to form a complete chain, you can imagine the mass-adoption of web3 among young Africans Huge potential.
✦ OS & dapp path of web3 mobile phone
The OS or dapp path of web3 mobile phone is actually very easy to understand. web3 OS is to build a separate decentralized (mobile phone) operating system with light nodes to realize the chain interaction in the whole system, and Mobile Dapps interact on the chain through the interactive facilities of dapps in the centralized mobile OS . This topic is very big, from the web3 browser, to the in-app store in the web3 wallet, to the complete web3 mobile OS, can be understood as a solution. Therefore, the author simplifies the complexity and only discusses the pure web3 mobile phone OS here.
Currently, the relatively pure web3 mobile phone OS includes different individual products such as ethOS, Conflux OS, and dappOS, while Near, Polkadot, etc. are also developing operating systems based on their own chain ecology. These OS systems are trying to build a system that provides a unified interface to the application layer, improves interaction efficiency through light nodes, and provides better developer tools, so as to pave the way for the future potential mobile web3 infrastructure. But is the reality really as good as we think?
First, let's discuss the necessity of web3 mobile phone OS. Through the comparative analysis of different existing OSs, the author believes that the greatest value of the current web3 OS is: providing a unified identity, wallet entry, unified scheduling of mobile phone hardware, and improving user experience. As shown in Figure 4, in the demonstration diagram of METAVERTU web3 OS, the innermost layer is the unified authentication and protection of personal identity, and the different functions of the outer ring have evolved from this. Without using web3 OS, if you want to operate more than two dapps on your mobile phone, you need to repeatedly jump between different dapps and repeatedly send data between different RPCs. Of course, the experience is not as good as web3 OS The operation inside is silky smooth. However, web3 OS itself has certain problems: the independent OS requires continuous maintenance by strong technical personnel in the background, the efficiency of technology and version updates is doubtful, and even creates security risks; alternatives such as web3 browser, wallet, etc. Similar functions can be achieved in this way, but the importance of intermediate experience and security cannot be fully verified.
Figure 4
On the other hand, we still have to talk about security. Using mobile dapp in an open source environment like Android OS is definitely the most insecure, so is web3 OS necessarily safer? The reason why the hardware wallet is safe is that it is not connected to the Internet and operates through a completely closed-loop built-in software, which is immune to hackers and network attacks. Although some web3 OS also cooperate with mobile phone chips to achieve physical storage of soft and hard keys, the web3 OS system itself may still be attacked, but I believe that web3 OS developers will target Do some security measures. From the perspective of user experience itself, do users really care about whether the security score is 80 or 90? Is the 90-point security provided by web3OS the only factor that prompts users to abandon the original 80-point security environment? No, what users really care about is whether it is easy to use, whether it is fun, and whether it can make money. Therefore, the real homework for web3 OS is still the fullness of the dapp store, the ease of use of multi-chain interaction, and the optimization of gas fee reduction and exemption. As for security, including data privacy, etc., it can only be said to be the icing on the cake.
Figure 5
JAMBO knows it well. JAMBO is a web3 superapp for the African market, and its recently launched JamboColor is also a web3 phone (Figure 5). From the current promotional materials, we have learned a few things: it sells for as little as $99, comes with free wired earphones, has a stylish appearance, and the built-in JAMBO superapp can watch to earn, play to earn, learn to earn, and chat to earn , but nothing about security, OS, etc. was mentioned. The author thinks this will be a very effective mass-adoption attempt, because it really takes into account what the user wants, not how I want to brag. The iteration of web3 technology is important, but it is a top-down matter, something that core members of the Ethereum community and A16z must consider. Ordinary users only need a good user experience to appreciate the style of web3.
User Experience & Community Response
An important part of mobile phone evaluation is user experience, and the quality of web3 products also depends partly on community feedback, so we need a section that combines user experience and community feedback to explore how these web3 mobile phones take off their gorgeous "Nude" after the clothes outside the brochure.
Let's take a look at METAVERTU first . Due to the dual-chip setting, METAVERTU can achieve completely isolated dual-system operation, that is, the user enters the new system home page through the Meta Space app, and performs on-chain operations including cloud storage (IPFS), Wallet, browser, etc. interaction, and you can also download new dapps from the built-in dapp store. On the whole, this set of experience is smooth, but the current dapp store ecology is not perfect, so many dapp download sources are actually only directed to external links, and because Vertu’s own Life Account requires a certain personal The system can only be used by binding personal information, so the so-called privacy and external data cannot be protected.
In terms of community response, the author mainly refers to Amazon, Taobao (Vertu has been acquired by a Hong Kong company and focuses on the Chinese market), comments on twitter, and reddit. First of all, there is a premise that users who buy such a high-priced mobile phone are less inclined to complain about real pain points online, so the author can only form a rough perception. From the evaluation of the e-commerce website, most of the complaints are complaints about the Vertu system itself, such as battery power, the smoothness of Vertu OS, heating problems, etc., and the only few feedbacks about the use of web3 are praise. So in general, due to the novelty of web3 mobile phones, users will have a perception bonus to the new experience and will not complain too much. And the so-called security and privacy, maybe no one cares too much before something goes wrong. Today's mobile phone market is no longer a simple hardware stack, and software capabilities are becoming more and more competitive. However, luxury web3 freak mobile phones like METAVERTU have a lot of problems at the software level, but because of the dual-core This kind of hardware stacking method has obtained a reasonable and even additive explanation from the web3 level. In any case, to borrow the words of Reddit , people who will actually buy METAVERTU are ultra-rich or ultra-stupid, and future web3 mobile phones should not use METAVERTU as a development milestone.
Then there is the Solana Saga. At present, there are many Chinese and English evaluation articles on Solana Saga. The author only makes a brief summary and discusses the trending views here. The first point of view is that Solana Saga is an overall tonality of "weak hardware, mixed web3 experience". The complaints about hardware mainly focus on the camera, lack of face recognition, post-mounted fingerprint entry, and screen display. In terms of effect, battery life, chip quality, etc., some users even commented that the actual value of the quality of their mobile phone is about 3,000 yuan. In terms of web3 experience, the overall UI and software are mixed, but it is still eye-catching because of the new experience bonus. The most popular product is the Seed Vault product, which essentially stores key information on the chip processor outside the Android system, so it can be understood as a trusted UI that combines software and hardware. Fingerprint verification method to verify transactions.
The most negative reviews are the adaptability of web3 software and the dapp store that is as ecologically deficient as METAVERU. In terms of adaptability, the current Solana Saga only supports Phantom, Solflare and Ultimate, which limits the use of some other ecological dapps, even including Bitcoin (of course, users can still use the webpage version or other dapps in the Android system). At the same time, different evaluation articles have written about the problems that wallets cannot be connected or crashed in different situations, and some dapp functions are missing, and the connection between google account and web3 account is confused and other adaptability problems. In this regard, the author thinks it is not Solana Saga's fault, and Solana Saga's SMS is also promoting more developers to improve the web3 mobile phone ecosystem. From the perspective of the dapp store ecology, as of June 2023, the dapp store only provides 30 dapps, and most of the dapps are non-mainstream dapps (as shown in Figure 6). The wallet download directory even includes Ledger live, imagine the future web3 mobile scenario: the user holds a ledger wallet and Solana Saga, switches currencies and passwords between different devices, and finally completes an NFT purchase. Is this Web3?
Figure 6
Finally, let's take a look at the relatively marginal products of Nothing Phone and HTC. Nothing Phone is dominated by design and UX. It is already an outlier in the mobile phone market, but its appearance is indeed cool enough. In terms of web3, Nothing Phone chose to cooperate with Polygon and developed some widgets such as PolygonID, NFT widgets, and wallets, and airdropped a Black Dots NFT to community users. These actions look more like a marketing campaign than a full web3 mobile experience. However, this method is actually a good attempt for mobile phone manufacturers. It uses some web3 widgets to add extra charm to the mobile phone and use NFT airdrops to promote marketing without affecting the mobile phone. The personal web2 experience can be said to be the icing on the cake.
The HTC Desire 22 pro was a relatively unsuccessful attempt. First of all, the web3 integration solution adopted by HTC desire 22 pro is to build a set of Metaverse components in the Android system, including VIVE wallet, VIVERSE, etc. In fact, HTC not only built a wallet, but also built a metaverse platform, which has violated the original intention of web3 decentralization. From the perspective of the VIVE wallet experience, it is only a low-profile version of the general crypto wallet, which supports more than 20 ERC-20 tokens and does not provide any re-development channels. It is a retrograde version of the web3 experience. Secondly, the positioning of the cheap HTC Desire 22 pro, not to mention the so-called chip storage, security environment and other functions that web3 mobile phones should have, can almost only be a product for the Ultra-stupid only group.
Table 1
Summarize
The topic of web3 mobile phones is too big and too new. Although we cannot cover all the information in detail, we still have to make a small contribution to a better web3 future through constructive summaries. The core question we focus on is: what kind of web3 mobile phone is in line with the future development trend? To sum up, there are the following points:
1. Web3 mobile phones need to go in the direction of combining hardware and software. The hardware-based security environment is the inherent advantage of mobile phones, and the combination of software and hardware is the key to improving user experience. Some existing web3 mobile phones have strong hardware and good UI, but the development direction of the next generation of web3 mobile phones must be products with strong hardware and good UI. I believe that it is only a matter of time before we create a web3 mobile phone that takes into account all aspects through careful polishing and the improvement of web3 awareness.
2. Web3 mobile phones need to go in the direction of universality. The current web3 mobile phones are more or less self-contained and self-closing, and the universal multi-chain interaction can truly enrich the dapp store and developer of web3 mobile phones. At the same time, it is necessary to consider the relationship between the mobile web3 ecology and the original mobile phone ecology. The two can be parallel, additional, or overlapping. No matter which direction you go in, you need to ensure the versatility of the mobile web3 ecology so that users can generate demand for the necessity of web3 mobile phones.
3. Web3 mobile phones need to go in the direction of popularization. High prices and niche brands are not popular choices, and the popularity of mobile phones should not be constrained by objective factors such as price and brand, and web3 mobile phones should not be a popular choice. Weird niche products (at least not in the future). JamboPhone is actually a good example. Putting aside the concepts of so-called dual-chip and safe environment, starting from the two most essential needs of low price and easy-to-use dapp, iteratively iterates from bottom to top.
