Solana Labs, the company behind the Solana blockchain ecosystem, has unveiled its landmark crypto-first Android smartphone Saga which will be available for the public from May 8th.
In a launch event on Thursday, April 13th, Solana Mobile, the mobile-focused team of Solana, announced the official launch of Saga, an Web 3 Android device aiming to accommodate the entire Solana ecosystem as well as all the features of a smartphone. According to the company, pre-order shipping will start from April 20th, with new orders set to begin May 8th.
Saga is available to ship now in the U.S., EU, the United Kingdom, Canada, Switzerland, Australia, and New Zealand.
What’s inside Saga?
Solana first teased the idea of a smartphone in June 2022 with the announcement of the Solana Mobile Stack (SMS) software kit, which provides tools for developing native Android mobile apps, walls, and games and includes a decentralized app store. At that time, the company also promised a powerful smartphone in early 2023.
Now Saga has been unveiled, it is an excellent time to look at this landmark device. The new device costs $1,000 and is built on hardware from Bay Area smartphone company OSOM. It features a 6.67” organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display, 512 GB storage, 12GB RAM, 50MP main & 12MP ultrawide dual-camera system, a 16MP selfie camera, and a rear fingerprint sensor. It also packs a Snapdragon 8 plus Gen1 Mobile Platform chipset, a 4110 mAH battery with Qi-compatible wireless charging, and comes with the latest Andriod 13 version.
For normal users, Solana Saga packs the feature of both a mobile and a hardware wallet. It features a Solana Dapp dApp store to provide unrestricted access to Web 3 apps. It is separate from Google Play Store. Sixteen dApps debuted on the launch day, spanning NFTs, DAOs, and staking. More will join as the demand grows.
According to Solana Mobile, they have tightly integrated Saga with the Solana Mobile Stack (SMS), Solana toolkit & an Android build environment for building mobile-first dApps. Developers can integrate this toolkit to enhance dApps’ functionality and easily submit to dApp Store. The Solana Foundation has also launched a new $10 million Mobile Fund to encourage the development of mobile-first dApps.
The Seed Vault will provide all the crypto-related security. According to Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana and CEO of Solana Labs, Seed Vault is the best security feature they have in Saga. He said:
“SeedVault is really f’ing cool tech. Some of the best @qualcomm engineers that I know worked on the @Snapdragon Trust Zone. It doesn’t just hide the seed phrase, it isolates the screen and touch interface from Android. There is no way for Android to read the screen buffer or intercept the touch requests. This is the magic that makes the phone as close to a hardware wallet as a mobile phone would allow.”
However, he still advised users to use dedicated hardware for cold crypto storage.
Per the announcement, Saga users will be able to claim a Saga genesis token NFT upon setting up their devices. This device-specific NFT will provide many benefits to Saga users.
Furthermore, Saga buyers will also have access to the “Welcome Pack” that includes 20 USDC to get them started, 0.01 SOL to cover first transaction fees on Solana, and a first come first served chance to “mint a Clayno NFT from the new 2,000 pieces “Claynosaurz: Call of Saga” collection.”
Store dApps will also provide their own welcome gifts to users. Initially, it will only support the Solana blockchain, with more chains coming asap.
Nevertheless, Solana Labs have taken all the possible to get to a great start with its crypto-forward smartphone. Previously, Taiwan-based tech giant HTC failed in its efforts to create a crypto-forward smartphone. How this goes for Solana? Only time will tell.
Here is the launch video.
