How To Use Solana Saga To Buy And Sell Crypto

Solana Saga, the Web3 mobile phone

Solana launched its Web3 mobile phone, the first of its kind, in April 2023. The phone packs all the usual functionalities users have come to expect from a smartphone and tops it up with a Web3 experience. It includes a decentralized application (DApp) store and seamless integration across crypto wallets and DApps. Saga has been tagged as the phone “that keeps on giving.”

The phone has been on pre-order for several months, and those who pre-ordered enjoyed airdrops like the “Saga Pass.” Holders of the Saga Pass also received several art airdrops in the form of nonfungible tokens (NFTs) leading up to the April launch. On April 13, 2023, Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana, went on stage to announce the launch of the phone and its features.

First reactions

The phone arrived a few weeks late for European users due to supply chain challenges. Even when American users started receiving their phones in April, it took May for those across the Atlantic to get theirs.

The phone has a good form factor that is not too different from an iPhone. The green buttons, ceramic backing and stainless steel frame make it feel like a mainstream phone. The phone runs on Android OS and is manufactured by OSOM, which presented it alongside the Solana co-founder at the launch event.

The phone packs a bunch of hardware elements. It has a 6.67-inch, 1080p resolution AMOLED screen and a 120Hz display. The processor used is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen1 with 12 gigabytes of RAM. The phone also comes with 512GB of storage, which is not very common with smartphones. The phone lasts longer than a typical iPhone 14 Pro with a 4,110-mAh battery.

There is also a fingerprint sensor on the back of the phone, which feels ergonomically intuitive for users. The camera takes good pictures, although an objective analysis of how it compares with an iPhone or Samsung camera is beyond the scope of this article. The sound quality of the in-built speakers could be better.

Setting up and software

The phone setup is pretty quick. The setup process includes creating a Solana wallet and a seed vault where the seed phrase is stored. Users can then rely on their fingerprints (biometrics) to unlock their wallets and sign transactions. The seed vault is a fundamental feature that sets it up for the Web3 experience.

The phone works like any other Android phone, and therefore, the basic setup is not any different from that of a normal Android phone.