Spiritual successor to Essential Phone is up for preorder, ships in early 2023

You may remember that back in December 2021, a company called OSOM, made up of former employees at the now-defunct Essential, announced plans for the OSOM OV1 smartphone. Since then, there hasn’t been much in the way of news for this upcoming handset. That changed today with the announcement of the Saga phone from Solana Mobile, a subsidiary of Solana Labs. Saga is the new name for the OV1, and OSOM has now partnered with Solana Mobile for the launch of the phone.

Along with the new name, there are some more changes for the rebranded Saga phone. Solana Mobile has launched the Solana Mobile Stack for the Saga. These software libraries will allow developers to make apps that will work to create apps for secure digital transactions. It will allow those apps to also connect to the Solana blockchain for the secure and easy transfer of digital assets including NFTs. Developers can access the Solana Mobile Stack SDK right now.

As far as the hardware specs for the phone, the Saga sounds like it will be a very high-end device. It will have a 6.67-inch OLED display, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 processor, 12GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage. There’s no word on other specs like the cameras or battery size, or whether or not it will support 5G networks.

The Saga phone is due for release sometime in early 2023, with Solana Mobile saying that it anticipates that it will cost around $1,000. It will only be available for sale in the US, Canada, the UK, and Europe. You can go ahead and pre-order the Saga now on its official website. You will have to put in a $100 deposit for the pre-order, which will go into the final price of the phone. The deposit is refundable if you decide to change your mind. Pre-orders could get access to the Saga Pass NFT if that interests you.