Many of our readers have been waiting for OSOM, the company reformed from the ashes of the Andy Rubin-less Essentials, to deliver the OV1 smartphone that’s been teasing since 2020. In what could be a good news/bad news arrangement, you can pre-order the phone now, but some key details have changed. OV1 is now Solana Saga, a blockchain-integrated Android flagship.
News of the change comes courtesy of a tweet from OSOM, which reached the websites of both OSOM and Solana with an accompanying update. Details are still sparse, and full specifications for the phone are yet to be published, but you can pre-order the device exclusively through Solana with a $100 deposit, although it does require a Solana wallet. Is.
ANDROIDpolice video of the day
An OSOM spokesperson provided the following details to Android Police:
OSOM is thrilled to partner with Solana to produce the Solana Saga, a flagship Android mobile phone with unparalleled functionality and tightly integrated with the Solana blockchain, allowing transactions across Web3 and management of digital assets such as tokens and NFTs. It becomes easier and safer to do. For more information about OSOM, please visit www.osomprivacy.com, and stay tuned for more information about the Saga as well as the OSOM/Solana partnership. “OSOM is incredibly excited to partner with Solana in producing the saga. The world needs new hardware companies to support the future of Web3. Jason Keats, founder and CEO of OSOM Products Inc., says that building an ecosystem that looks to the future without the burden of legacy ecosystems of the past is extremely exciting.
In follow-up correspondence, OSOM PR confirms to us that OV1 as we knew it to be essentially dead, has been replaced by a Solana-integrated Saga. According to Solana’s site, the phone has support for Solana Mobile Stack, an SDK developed for creating apps on Android that can interact with the Solana network. Solana says this will allow developers to “publish mobile dApps and distribute them through a special storefront,” possibly available over the phone.
Specs for the phone have now also been published:
| Chipset | Snapdragon 8 Gen 1+ (Qualcomm 8475) |
|---|---|
| storage | 512GB UFS or eMMC |
| to hit | 12GB |
| show | “FD+ or higher” 6.55″ 120Hz AMOLED |
| software | “Proprietary version of OSOM Android” |
| rear camera | 50MP f/1.8 IMX766 wide-angle (70° FOV), 12MP f/2.2 IMX373 ultra-wide (120° FOV) |
| front camera | 16MP f/1.8 IMX481 (80° FOV, fixed-focus) |
| battery and charging | 4100mAh, QC 5.0 Fast-Charging, Qi Wireless Charging |
| connectivity | Bluetooth 5.0, Wi-Fi up to 6, NFC |
| various | Mono Loudspeaker, Corning Victus Glass, |
| Dimensions | 166.2 x 75.9 x 7.9mm, <195g |
Many Essential fans liked the original model for its surprisingly small size, but going by the dimensions provided, OSOM’s Saga will be a bigger phone – bigger than the Galaxy S22 and the same size as the Galaxy S22+. Powered by the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 1+, the chipset in the phone may not be the latest and the biggest could come next year, as Qualcomm usually announces its new hardware.
Some of the details seem like they can’t be firmed up yet, as OSOM lists two different storage standards, both eMMC and UFS. There will also be at least two different SKUs with different band support.
OSOM also claims it will run a “proprietary version of Android,” and it’s unclear what that would mean. Previously, the company somewhat teased a partnership with Graphene OS, a security-conscious custom ROM that has often been embroiled in drama for attempting to pull its open source contributions from other projects.
The OSOM/Solana Saga will ship in “early 2023” with an estimated cost of $1,000. In March, the company told us that the phone would be “well sub-$1,000” and it doesn’t seem to have been capped at this estimation.
OSOM is not the first company to consider a blockchain-integrated phone. HTC, in the face of market downturns and relevancy, similarly turned to blockchain in 2018 with the exodus. If that doesn’t sound familiar, it’s probably because it had no real effect, and the phone was just a rebadge. HTC U12+. A follow-up phone, the HTC Exodus 1S, made a little extra progress. Many recent Samsung phones can also store cryptocurrency inside encrypted storage. Last year, Samsung added support for transferring crypto from a hardware wallet to your phone.
While cryptocurrency and the “Web3” movement are popular among some tech enthusiasts and speculative investors, at this point many clients view cryptocurrency and blockchain-related applications as little more than marketing, with concrete applications proving themselves or use cases. To do very little.
As a fan of the technology that underpins the blockchain system and the opportunities it can provide in developing new technologies and new systems, even I am currently aware of the marketing approach and almost all commercially promoted blockchains. – Be critical of the promotion of related services and products. In 99% of apps, it’s a gimmick, and it covers every smartphone use case to date. Seeing a phone I’ve weighed with a crypto gimmick for now is pretty disappointing, frankly. I’m hesitant to say that the phone has gone bad, we’ll have to see what the finished product actually looks like, but this was a quick and easy way to quell my excitement.
