OSOM’s hotly-anticipated OV1 smartphone succumbs to crypto gimmick as Solana Saga

Lots of our readers have been ready for OSOM, the corporate reformed from the ashes of an Andy Rubin-less Important, to ship the OV1 smartphone it has been teasing since 2020. In what is going to seemingly be a excellent news/unhealthy information association, now you can pre-order the cellphone, however some key particulars have modified. The OV1 is now the Solana Saga, a blockchain-integrated Android flagship.

The information of the change comes courtesy of a Tweet from OSOM, which landed with a simultaneous replace to each OSOM and Solana’s web site. Particulars are nonetheless sparse, and full specs for the cellphone nonetheless have not been printed, however you may pre-order the gadget with a $100 deposit solely by means of Solana, although that requires a Solana pockets.

A spokesperson from OSOM offered Android Police with the next particulars:

OSOM is thrilled to companion with Solana to supply the Solana Saga, a flagshipAndroid cell phone with distinctive performance and options tightly built-in with the Solana blockchain making it straightforward and safe to transact in web3 and handle digital property, akin to tokens and NFTs. For extra data on OSOM, please go to www.osomprivacy.com, and keep tuned for additional data on the Saga in addition to the OSOM/Solana partnership.“OSOM is extremely excited to companion with Solana in constructing the Saga. The world wants novel {hardware} corporations to assist the long run that’s Web3. Constructing out an ecosystem that appears to the long run with out being burdened by previous legacy ecosystems is massively thrilling” says Jason Keats, Founder and CEO of OSOM Merchandise Inc.

In follow-up correspondence, OSOM PR confirms to us that the OV1 as we knew it’s primarily lifeless, changed by the Solana-integrated Saga. In accordance with Solana’s web site, the cellphone options assist for the Solana Cell Stack, an SDK developed for constructing apps on Android that may work together with the Solana community. Solana says this may enable builders “to publish cellular dAPPS and distribute them by means of a specialised storefront,” presumably out there on the cellphone.

Specs for the cellphone have now been printed as properly:

Many Important followers favored the unique mannequin for its surprisingly small measurement, however OSOM’s Saga can be a bigger cellphone — larger than the Galaxy S22 and roughly the identical measurement because the Galaxy S22+, based on the scale offered. Powered by the newest Snapdragon 8 Gen 1+, the chipset within the cellphone may not be the newest and best come subsequent 12 months, after Qualcomm sometimes pronounces its new {hardware}.

A few of particulars sound like they may not be agency but, as OSOM lists two completely different storage requirements, each eMMC and UFS. There may also be at the very least two completely different SKUs with differing band assist.

OSOM additionally claims it will likely be operating a “proprietary model of Android,” and it is not clear exactly what that can imply. Beforehand, the corporate teased involvement to a point with Graphene OS, a security-conscious customized ROM which has been often embroiled in drama for attempting to pull its ostensibly open source contributions from other projects.

The OSOM/Solana Saga will ship in “early 2023” with an anticipated value of $1,000. In March, the corporate advised us that the cellphone can be “properly sub-$1,000” and that does not seem to have panned out based on this estimate.

OSOM is not the primary firm to think about a blockchain-integrated cellphone. HTC, within the face of declining market share and relevance, equally turned to the blockchain with the Exodus in 2018. If that does not sound acquainted, that is most likely as a result of it did not have any actual affect, and the cellphone was only a rebadged HTC U12+. A follow-up cellphone, the HTC Exodus 1s, made little additional headway. Many latest Samsung telephones can retailer cryptocurrency inside encrypted storage as properly. Final 12 months, Samsung added support for transferring crypto from a {hardware} pockets to its telephones.

Whereas cryptocurrency and the “web3” motion are common amongst some tech lovers and speculative traders, many shoppers at this level see cryptocurrency and blockchain-related purposes as little greater than advertising, doing little to show themselves with concrete purposes or use circumstances.

As a fan of the know-how that underpins blockchain techniques and the alternatives it could present in creating novel applied sciences and new techniques, even I need to admit being crucial of the at the moment marketed strategy and hype surrounding virtually all commercially promoted blockchain-related companies and merchandise. In 99% of purposes, it is a gimmick, and that features each smartphone use case thus far. Seeing a cellphone that I might gotten so labored up for now weighed down with a crypto gimmick is fairly disappointing, frankly. I hesitate to say the cellphone has been ruined, we’ll must see what the completed product truly seems to be like, however this was a fast and straightforward method to kill my pleasure.