Good news: You can pre-order one now. Bad news: Now with 100% more crypto gimmicks
This article covers a developing story. Continue to check back with us as we will be adding more information as it becomes available.
Many of our readers have been waiting for OSOM, the company reformed from the ashes of an Andy Rubin-less Essential, to deliver the OV1 smartphone it’s been teasing since 2020. In what will likely be a good news/bad news arrangement, you can now pre-order the phone, but some key details have changed. The OV1 is now the Solana Saga, a blockchain-integrated Android flagship.
The news of the change comes courtesy of a Tweet from OSOM, which landed with a simultaneous update to both OSOM and Solana’s website. Details are still sparse, and full specs for the phone still haven’t been published, but you can pre-order the device with a $100 deposit exclusively through Solana, though that requires a Solana wallet.
A spokesperson from OSOM provided Android Police with the following details:
OSOM is thrilled to partner with Solana to produce the Solana Saga, a flagshipAndroid mobile phone with unique functionality and features tightly integrated with the Solana blockchain making it easy and secure to transact in web3 and manage digital assets, such as tokens and NFTs. For more information on OSOM, please visit www.osomprivacy.com, and stay tuned for further information on the Saga as well as the OSOM/Solana partnership.“OSOM is incredibly excited to partner with Solana in building the Saga. 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” says Jason Keats, Founder and CEO of OSOM Products Inc.
In follow-up correspondence, OSOM PR confirms to us that the OV1 as we knew it is essentially dead, replaced by the Solana-integrated Saga. According to Solana’s site, the phone features support for the Solana Mobile Stack, an SDK developed for building 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 specialized storefront,” presumably available on the phone.
The OSOM/Solana Saga will ship in “early 2023.”
OSOM isn’t the first company to consider a blockchain-integrated phone. HTC, in the face of declining market share and relevance, similarly turned to the blockchain with the Exodus in 2018. If that doesn’t sound familiar, that’s probably because it didn’t have any real impact, and the phone was just a rebadged HTC U12+. A follow-up phone, the HTC Exodus 1s, made little extra headway.
Developing… refresh for more
