Review: Solana Saga is the first phone built around crypto

Once upon a time, computers and the internet promised a path to freedom: of speech, of commerce, to be yourself, no matter who you were. We’ve since realized this was all a delusion and that our devices have increasingly become a way to track and control us. Especially the most personal of our devices — the smartphone — which is our constant companion, contains our most private thoughts and images, and is essentially a networked surveillance device over which we have far less control than we imagine.

For those of us who dig technology but are increasingly concerned about a growing global panopticon, we face a conundrum: Do we continue to dance with these convenient and powerful devices — that are just as useful to the enemy as they are to us — or do we return to simple cell phones and personal computers? In other words, can we wear the One Ring a little, or do we have to throw it in the fires of Mordor?

Upstart OSOM — founded by former Essential Phone employees — aims to chart a third way through this dilemma with the Solana Saga, the world’s first smartphone built around cryptocurrencies.

Does the Saga offer a path to sovereignty, or is it just another Android phone with a crypto frosting?

Device specs:

• Dimensions: 164 mm x 75.3 mm x 8.4 mm and weighing 247 grams
• Materials: Stainless steel frame with ceramic back and titanium accents
• Display: 1080-by-2400 (FHD+) with a 6.67-inch AMOLED display and 120Hz refresh rate
• Battery capacity: 4110 mAh with Qi-compatible wireless charging
• Processor: Snapdragon 8+ Gen1
• Storage: 512 GB UFS + microSD up to 512 GB and 12 GB LPDDR5 of RAM with a dual nanoSIM
• Wireless: 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax + 2x2 MIMO WiFi and EMVCo Certified NFC along with ultrawideband Channels 5 & 9
• Cameras: Rear cameras with OIS 50MP f/1.8 Wide + 12MP f/2.2 Ultrawide and a 16MP f/2.4 Wide front camera

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Context: I’m a casual web3 user

I’m no stranger to web3, but I wouldn’t call myself an expert. I hold Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Chainlink. I’ve dropped an embarrassing amount of money on ENS domains and collected a few NFTs, but while I love the idea of an encrypted, decentralized internet, I haven’t really found that web3 has delivered on more than a tiny fraction of its promises thus far.

My experience with web3 has largely revolved around NFTs – even my ENS domain is another NFT. So I see many potential uses for NFTs, especially in the areas of digital IDs and certifications, but the reality in 2023 is that they’re still more about collectibles than they are about identity and access control for apps I can use to get real work done.

Outside of NFTs, I have yet to find a “killer app” that necessitates pumping coins (and gas fees) into my interactions. I’m aware of a few web3 messaging apps, but I haven’t found a reason to leave Signal, primarily since most of my social circle uses it.

It was with this background that I approached the Solana Saga – would the device’s explicit web3 focus help it all make sense? Will picking up the Saga give me that “Aha!” moment that makes web3 click?

Let’s look at the features that make the Saga a “web3” phone.

The Saga secret sauce: The Seed Vault

The Solana Saga is intended to be used as a Solana hardware wallet. You may ask, why not just use the phone you already have and install any of the many mobile wallets on the market, such as Exodus Wallet?

The difference, as maker OSOM explains, is the Saga’s patented Seed Vault, which stores your seed in hardware in such a way that it cannot be accessed directly by Android:

Our patented Seed Vault stores your wallet details safely and separately from the Android system. It’s like a cold wallet but built right into your phone with one-tap integration for transactions, protecting you more than a mere app can.

Steven Laver, Solana’s mobile engineering lead, explained that the Seed Vault takes advantage of Qualcomm’s Secure Execution Environment, paired with the Secure Processing Unit, “which is a dedicated hardware component that provides a super-secure place for encryption and data processing.” Those two hardware components are paired with something called Trusted UI, which temporarily takes control of the display and touch input from Android.

As a result, Android should never be able to actually see any of your Seed Vault’s seeds, keys, or passwords. It’s very similar to Apple’s Secure Enclave technology, which safeguards your biometric data in a special chip on the device.

The practical upside of the Seed Vault is that you can quickly authorize Solana transactions with your fingerprint, a feature that in theory makes it much easier to use web3 apps.

The other cool thing is that since your key is stored in hardware on the device, you can use any Seed Vault-compatible wallet app interchangeably with it, since the app effectively just acts as a front end to the hardware.

The Seed Vault is impressive technology, but there are some practical security concerns it can’t address. Since the Saga is a phone and therefore a device you’re always going to have with you, it’s effectively a hot wallet that’s easy to misplace, break, or have stolen. Realistically, you’re not going to want to store that much crypto on a phone, regardless of how secure the underlying tech is.

And the presence of the Seed Vault might present confusion to casual Saga owners, if such people exist.

Before completing the setup, you are presented with a 24-word seed phrase that you are expected to write down on the included card, and yes, there is a test. Before you can use the phone, you must write out the entire seed phrase to prove that you have written it down.

For dedicated crypto people, this familiar ritual is just a standard step in setting up a wallet. For normies, it might be a baffling hurdle. But again, I'm not sure many normies will accidentally buy a $1,000 phone … unless the long-prophesied hyperinflation happens and $1K USD is not very much in SOL or whatever coin we all end up using in the cyberpunk dystopia.

While the Seed Vault is a cool idea, it only works with three wallets: Phantom, Solflare, and Ultimate.

• Solflare only works with Solana.
• Phantom was previously Solana-only but just recently added support for Polygon and the second-most popular cryptocurrency: Ethereum.
• Ultimate supports a variety of currencies and is very web3-focused, as you might expect.

Unfortunately, the Seed Vault doesn’t work with any wallet that supports the most popular cryptocurrency, Bitcoin. That makes some sense in a web3 phone, since Bitcoin isn’t “smart” like Ethereum and Solana are (at least, not without the Stacks layer), but makes the Saga much less appealing to an enormous chunk of the crypto market.

The Solana Mobile team tells us that there is support for other wallets on the way. The Solana Mobile Stack is open source, so there’s nothing stopping any wallet developer from adding Seed Vault support.

Unfortunately, the Seed Vault is buggy. Sometimes I would scan my finger to authorize a Solana app and I’d be left with an "apply signature" prompt with no other instructions. I would tap "use password," only to return to the fingerprint scanning prompt and thus an endless loop.

Also, while Phantom now works with Ethereum, that doesn’t mean every Ethereum app works with the Saga. I tried to connect to the Ethereum Name Service on the Saga, but the only wallet options were Coinbase, MetaMask, Rainbow, and WalletConnect.

In theory, WalletConnect would let you connect Phantom to ENS. However, tapping that option on the Saga opens the included Ledger Live app, which requires a Ledger hardware wallet to add even more confusion. On the upside, if you do have a Ledger wallet, you can connect it directly to the Saga via USB-C or Bluetooth.

A Solana phone? Really?

Given that this is a collaboration between Solana Labs and OSOM, it makes a certain amount of sense that the phone centers around the Solana cryptocurrency. But to even the average web3-pilled end user, it’s not clear that tying the phone this closely to Solana was the win OSOM was hoping for.

The chief advantage of the Solana blockchain is that unlike Bitcoin, it supports smart contracts, which enable things like web3 apps. And unlike Ethereum, which can have insanely high “gas” fees, Solana’s fees are tiny, which makes tossing around real money on experimental apps much more palatable. That makes the Solana blockchain a great playground for web3.

However, it increasingly feels like web3 is a forgotten technology of 2022, with the world readily moving on to AI and — thanks to Apple’s Vision Pro — mixed reality. Not helping things is the SEC’s lawsuits against Binance and Coinbase, which threatens the entire crypto market, especially centralized coins like Solana.

The Saga web3 experience

Besides the Seed Vault, the other half of the Saga’s Solana angle is the built-in dApp Store, which is Solana’s app store dedicated to web3 apps. As of May 31, 2023, I count 29 apps in the dApp Store, most of which are financial apps or NFT apps. This is the phone to have if you really love NFTs.

As for the rest, I haven’t found much that’s useful or even all that interesting.

The first app I tried was a messaging app called Dialect, which is a web3 messaging app with built-in NFTs. Unfortunately, Dialect is in early access, so I not only know no one else who uses Dialect, I can’t even invite my friends to try it. Most of the activity there seems to consist of public chats where users show off their NFTs.

I downloaded a game, Alpha League Racing, only to find that it’s apparently not open for business. The game told me the first season is over, with no option to play.

Another game I tried is a MOBA called Tearing Spaces, which seems more like a demo than a complete game. There’s no menu; it immediately launches you into one single, short level with a persistent onscreen message that says, “The quality of the beta game-play does not represent the final version.” Then you shoot the boss until you’re presented with a restart button.

I tried an app called Rosen Bridge, which declares itself “the first super app on Solana.” I don’t know what that means. I open the app and I’m prompted to “Be a Blazer.” Again, I don’t know what that means. From what I can tell, it’s some sort of metaverse real estate app where you can pay real money to occupy fake versions of real places. I have no idea why I should care about that. Maybe I’m just old.

What’s interesting about Rosen Bridge is I had to create a login. Isn’t part of the point of web3 to use your wallet as your credentials? Then I tapped a button to apply for a free plot — whatever that means — and I was prompted to log into my Google account. Why does a web3 app need so many logins?

The single most interesting app I found in the dApp Store is Audius Music, a social music app where fledgling artists share their music so you can stream it and then tip them in the $MUSIC cryptocurrency. It’s a neat idea, but I’m willing to bet that most users will skip it, fire up Google Play (which is thankfully preinstalled), and open either Apple Music or Spotify.

There is one app in the dApp Store I recognized: the Brave browser. I was curious whether the Brave Wallet integrated with the Seed Vault, but no dice. It’s the exact same app as the one you would download from the Play Store.

To Solana’s credit, they give you a couple of NFTs and $20 in USD Coin to get started. However, I never felt a compelling reason to trade any of that USDC for Solana. The apps themselves weren’t that interesting, and outside financial apps, I didn’t see much Solana integration.

Crypto aside, how is it as a smartphone?

The Solana Saga arrives in minimalistic packaging, similar to newer iPhones. Open the svelte box and … there’s a phone. Lift up the tray that holds the phone and you’ll find a SIM tray tool, a seed phrase recovery sheet, and a USB-C cable. Again, like recent iPhones, no power adapter is included.

My first thought on picking up and turning on the Saga is, “This is a really nice phone.” The Saga’s materials — ceramic, stainless steel, and titanium — make it feel like a $1,000 phone should.

The fact that the Saga is so nice shouldn’t come as a surprise. Designer OSOM was founded by employees of Essential Phone, which was also a lovely phone but doomed to commercial failure.

It’s as nice as or nicer than any iPhone Pro — except without an annoying notch or a “Dynamic Island.” Instead, it has merely a small pinhole for the front-facing camera.

However, the tradeoff is that the Saga doesn’t have face recognition. Instead, it features a fingerprint scanner on the back — pretty standard in Android phones. Frankly, other than a couple of times when my hands were otherwise occupied, I didn’t miss FaceID, which is often finicky. And having the fingerprint scanner on the back of the phone is much more ergonomic than an obtrusive Home button at the bottom of the device.

My only quibble with the design is the opening for the front speaker, which is a small gap between the screen and body. At first, I mistook it for a design defect, and I worry that over time dust and debris could accumulate there.

The 6.67-inch AMOLED screen is bright with equally bright colors and deep blacks. The 120Hz refresh rate makes it feel positively snappy compared to iPhones.

However, the colors on the AMOLED screen look “funky” compared to LED screens. There can often be a purple hue, and colors often look overly garish. However, unless you’re a professional colorist this is merely a matter of opinion, and the screen is still lovely to look at.

The Saga ships with stock Android 13 with no other additions other than some Saga-specific apps and settings. There’s no bloatware to be found here.

Android 13 is every bit as polished as iOS 16, if not more so, because Google has spent years polishing Android while iOS has grown sloppier as Apple tacks on more features.

Overall, the Solana Saga feels terrific. The premium materials feel good in your hand, the screen is bright and responsive, and it’s just a whole lot of fun. For the first time in years, I want to pick up a phone and play with it just because.

I made the mistake of letting my 9-year-old son try out the phone, and it quickly became an obsession, like Gollum with the One Ring. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing, but it definitely speaks to the phone’s sheer desirability.

Calling and texting

So many smartphone reviews skip an essential but unsexy aspect: At heart, they are still phones, and that functionality is important. Our Saga review unit did not include a SIM card, so I popped in my AT&T network SIM card and gave it a whirl.

I’ve heard untold horror stories about switching away from iOS only for iMessage to keep eating incoming text messages. One of Android’s setup screens even mentioned this. But surprisingly, I didn’t have this problem. I texted my iPhone-using wife and received one back, albeit with a bit of delay at first while the back-end plumbing adapted.

I also tried a test call to my wife, and it worked fine. The ear speaker is crisp and loud, she could hear me just fine, and she detected no difference in audio quality after I switched to speakerphone.

The Saga supports 5G, but I could only pick up LTE service in my small town. I ran Speedtest to get a whopping 2.69 Mbps download speed and 0.34 Mbps upload speed, but it’s hard to say if that was more attributable to my network or location.

However, I did find a deal killer for many of us: The Solana does not support Wi-Fi calling. Or, at least, it doesn’t support Wi-Fi calling with my carrier even though its Wi-Fi calling works with my iPhone. Other Saga users have experienced this as well. Solana Mobile tells me that Wi-Fi calling works with T-Mobile. Sadly, it’s small but important details like this that keep me on iOS. Every iPhone supports Wi-Fi calling, but with Android phones, it’s a crapshoot.

I do not have cellular service at my rural home and depend on Wi-Fi calling, as do many other rural dwellers and urban folks who live in apartment buildings. Given that carriers stopped selling femtocells years ago, many of us rely on Wi-Fi calling for situations like these, so it’s baffling that support is so sketchy.

Pictures and video

The camera may be just as important in modern smartphones as the phone part. The rear of the phone has two camera sensors:

• A 50-megapixel wide-angle lens with a 1.8 f-stop capturing 4K video at up to 60 fps.
• A 12-megapixel ultrawide lens with a 2.2 f-stop that can capture 4K video at up to 60 fps.

The front-facing selfie camera is a 16-megapixel lens with a 2.4 f-stop that can capture video at up to 2K resolution at 60 fps.

There are a couple of notable disappointments at this price point: the lack of a third rear sensor for telephoto shots and no 4K selfies.

The included camera app is OSOM’s in-house camera app, essentially a clone of Apple’s camera app, so iPhone switchers will feel very much at home.

It includes the following modes:

• Portrait
• Photo
• Video
• Night

There don’t appear to be slo-mo or time-lapse modes.

Reviewing smartphone cameras is increasingly difficult because they’re all so darn good now, and the results are mainly subjective. I compared the Solana Saga against my iPhone 11 Pro in a variety of conditions and found them roughly equivalent. In some shots, one produced brighter images than the other, but you’d be hard-pressed to tell the difference unless you looked at photos side by side.

I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. On the one hand, the iPhone 11 Pro has an excellent camera. On the other hand, it’s nearly four years older than the Solana Saga, so you’d expect the Saga’s camera to be noticeably better.

Other technical details

The Solana Saga includes a generous 512 MB of internal storage. Pop out the SIM tray with the included tool, and it also features a spot for a microSD card for additional storage. This feature is increasingly rare in even Android phones and is greatly appreciated.

The Saga features IP68 dust and water resistance, which is the same as the iPhone 14 Pro and means that it can safely survive being dunked in water.

Qi wireless charging is built in. However, I had trouble getting it to work consistently. I’m not sure if this is on the part of the phone or my wireless charging accessories, which tend to be tailored for an iPhone.

It includes a 4110 mAh internal battery. Like cameras, battery life is subjective and degrades over time, but I was pleased with the battery life. I suspect you could go a day and a half without charging, assuming you’re not playing graphically intensive games.

Will the Solana Saga make you more sovereign?

Let’s compare the Saga against our own tenets of digital sovereignty:

Own your data, money, and online identities.

The Solana Saga is deeply tied into Google services: the Play Store, Chrome, Gmail, and all the rest are built in. This means you have all the same privacy concerns as any other Google device.

To truly be a sovereign phone, it would need to ship with an open-source Android ROM like LineageOS or GrapheneOS. Unfortunately, it’s uncertain if the Saga is even rootable, and in any case, no third-party ROMs are available yet, though the company has hinted at it.

The phone does give you extra control over your money and identity — in the form of Solana-based DeFi and NFTs. However, the main cryptocurrency of choice for digital sovereignists is Bitcoin, and because the Seed Vault doesn’t support any Bitcoin wallets, the Solana Saga is fundamentally no better a Bitcoin wallet than literally any other phone. The same goes for ENS domains, which have become a de facto form of decentralized identity. Since ENS is based on Ethereum, again, the Saga is no different from any other phone there.

Communicate privately, securely, and, if desired, pseudonymously.

As we mentioned, the semi-exclusive Dialect app isn't very useful yet. And you also have the privacy concerns that come with a Google device. So you’re left with apps like Signal for private communications, which isn’t any better than any other Android phone or iPhone.

Choose who gets to know what about you and your activities — and on what terms.

Again, it’s a Google phone, so throw this out the window. You file the last three tenets from our article’s list under that umbrella:

• Break the one-way mirror and watch web2 as it watches you.
• Know your enemies — who’s trying to track you and to what end.
• Prefer decentralization over centralization.

If you’re currently using an iPhone, yes, the Solana Saga will make you more sovereign simply because of the more open nature of Android. You can sideload apps not approved by Google’s Play Store overlords and even sideload entire app stores, like the open-source F-Droid, but it won’t make you any more sovereign than any other Android phone.

Also, ideally, a sovereign device should be user-repairable. OSOM has mentioned selling spare parts through its online store, but nothing has been released yet.

The beginning of a Saga?

The Solana Saga achieves what it set out to do: It’s a phone that integrates a Solana hardware wallet and presents the best web3 has to offer. The problem is that what web3 has to offer still isn’t much beyond NFTs and trading.

With the current state of web3 and all the question marks I have around Solana, I would have a hard time recommending it over the Google Pixel, which is less expensive and has much more aftermarket support, including a plethora of custom ROMs for a truly sovereign experience.

That said, the hardware and design are great. And as someone who’s been firmly in iPhone-land for over a decade, I’m impressed with how far Android has come. It used to be that Android was the Linux to iOS’ macOS: a much more free experience, but with edges rough enough to rip your shirt with. Now it’s every bit as nice as iOS, except less constrained and cumbersome.

I may have to take a serious look at an Android device. But until the Solana-based side of web3 steps up in a big way with something more than digital collectibles, buggy games, and NFT trading, I don’t think it’ll be a Solana Saga.

What’s worse is that I don’t think there’s much the Saga’s makers can do in the near term to really sell me on the device — the shortcomings here are mostly on the Solana side of the “Solana Saga” equation, which puts them out of OSOM’s control. Web3 and Solana just yet don’t offer enough for me as a casual crypto user to make either of those technologies the center of my smartphone experience. This is a shame, because with the way things are going, we need web3 to be in better shape than it is.

One more thing: Helium mobile

A few weeks after we received the Solana Saga, we received an email telling us that we would receive a SIM card with a 30-day free trial of Helium Mobile, which is a new mobile carrier currently in beta. There’s currently very little public information about the network, but presumably, it integrates with the crypto-based Helium network, which is a distributed wireless network. You “mine” Helium by providing a wireless hotspot, which encourages the growth of the network. Helium recently switched to the Solana blockchain, so a partnership with Solana makes sense.

Pairing the Saga with a crypto-based wireless network is potentially game-changing, and we’re eager to test it out.

To find out more about this phone, head over to Solana’s website.