Solana’s crypto-ready “Saga” smartphone goes on sale on May 8

Solana Labs’ crypto-forward smartphone Saga will go on public sale on May 8, the company behind the Solana blockchain said Thursday. Pre-ordered units are now shipping.

The Android smartphone is a play on mobile that is crucial to the future of crypto, employees at Solana-focused companies told CoinDesk. It was almost 10 months ago that Solana first teased the radical potential of a mobile phone doubling as a dedicated crypto hardware wallet, and the possibilities such a product could hold for the entire ecosystem.

The new device from Solana Mobile costs $1,000 and is built on hardware from Bay Area smartphone company OSOM. It has 512GB of storage, two versatile rear camera lenses, a 6.67-inch OLED display and a fingerprint scanner. It comes with the latest Android operating system installed.

What makes Saga different, according to Solana, is the “Solana Mobile Stack” (SMS), a series of custom add-ons that integrate crypto utility into the phone’s hardware and software. SMS has ingrained security features for sending, receiving, trading and storing crypto on the device.

Saga’s secure element – ​​the hack-resistant part of the smartphone where confidential information lives – is customized with a “seed vault” that stores a crypto user’s private keys. Keeping keys separate from the rest of your phone’s data makes them more secure, says Solana.

Saga has a custom “dApp” store that only displays crypto applications. Currently, over a dozen applications covering crypto trading, inter-wallet communication, music and digital collectibles were available for download, with more expected over time.

Solana says it won’t impose “extraction fees” on dApp Store apps, a dig at the 30% tax Apple and Google charge on their respective storefronts. Its dApp store is separate from Android’s “Google Play” (also on Saga).

Big phone makers from HTC to small ones like Sirin Labs have previously failed in their attempts to create a crypto-forward smartphone, setting an ominous precedent for Solana, a device built for and marketed to a single crypto ecosystem.

That ecosystem has taken a hit since June 2022, when Solana founder Anatoly Yakovenko unveiled the Saga at a New York City event headlined by Sam Bankman-Fried, the fallen FTX boss and alleged crypto fraudster. Solana’s community of partisan developers and traders grew increasingly defensive, even as some of Solana’s core technology repeatedly floundered.

Going big on mobile can provide more than a chance for narrative reset – according to staff at Solana ecosystem booster, the Foundation, it’s an opportunity to put crypto in people’s pockets, where the rest of the digital world has already gone.