Solana is making a crypto cellphone with assist from former Essential engineers

The cellphone beforehand often called the Osom OV1, constructed by a staff consisting of former engineers and designers from Essential, is being renamed and repurposed at the moment, and it’s all within the title of crypto. This afternoon in New York City, blockchain firm Solana introduced its personal cell phone, referred to as the Saga, made in collaboration with Osom. It’s priced at $1,000, and preorders open at the moment. A $100 deposit is required, and Solana says the Saga will ship within the first quarter of 2023.

The cellphone may have a 6.67-inch 120Hz OLED show, 512GB of storage, and 12GB of RAM. It’ll be powered by Qualcomm’s newest Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 chip and is outfitted with a 50-megapixel main digicam, plus a 12-megapixel ultra-wide shooter. But greater than the standard hardware specs that the majority gadget nerds are all for, the Saga is supposed to assist crypto proceed its quest to “go mobile,” within the phrases of Solana CEO Anatoly Yakovenko.

This gadget is for folks entrenched within the universe of crypto wallets, Web3, and NFTs, and it’ll include a novel function: assist for decentralized apps that depend on the Solana blockchain, which has a minimum of briefly rivaled Ethereum in relation to NFT gross sales quantity. NFT market Magic Eden, Solana pockets maker Phantom, and cryptocurrency alternate Orca have signed on to again the Saga and Solana’s new software program efforts.

Osom has confirmed to The Verge that the OV1 and Saga at the moment are one and the identical, which means that this gadget is the corporate’s main focus. “Osom is incredibly excited to partner with Solana in building the Saga,” founder and CEO Jason Keats mentioned. “The world needs novel hardware companies to support the future that is Web3. Building out an ecosystem that looks to the future without being burdened by past legacy ecosystems is hugely exciting.”

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

That “past legacy ecosystems” line is probably in reference to Solana’s different bulletins at the moment: the corporate launched the Solana Mobile Stack, an open dApp (quick for decentralized purposes) Store that can run on the Android-based Saga. The firm is envisioning an enormous proliferation of crypto-native apps, digital providers, and digital items that will likely be made attainable by means of its new stack, which will likely be accessible to different Android gadget makers, too.

“We didn’t see a single crypto announcement at Apple’s developer conference, 13 years after Bitcoin went live,” Yakovenko mentioned throughout a Q&A session. “I think it’s going to be up to us.”

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Solana claims builders will get early entry to the Saga. “We’re targeting those hardcore people that understand what self custody means,” Yakovenko mentioned when requested how Solana’s cellular stack and new instruments will provide a greater expertise than digital crypto and NFT wallets from Samsung and different giant tech corporations.

It’s fairly a pivot should you have been hoping Osom would simply produce a comparatively regular, privacy-focused Android cellphone — an Essential Phone 2, in different phrases. And it additionally goes in opposition to what Osom told Android Police again in March when the corporate estimated the OV1 could be priced “well under $1,000.” The actual check will likely be whether or not the Saga really ships on the right track in early 2023, as each Solana and Osom declare it should. And if there will likely be a viable viewers for a product like this exterior of the auditorium of excited Web3 fans who cheered its introduction. Even skilled cellphone makers like HTC have gone down this path and did not make any actual influence.