Written by Yobo, Foresight News
First of all: Thanks to Daniel from SolanaFoundation for his human cross-border courier service, I was able to experience this hard-to-buy phone. I hope he won’t block me after reading this.
Saga is cool, both for the story behind it and the special significance that Solana gives it to Web3.
But Saga is not good enough, at least as a phone priced high enough for a flagship, it is far from complete.
In 2014, Andy Rubin, known as the father of Android, resigned from Google and took away a huge severance package of up to $90 million. His legendary life ushered in a somewhat bad turning point. In 2017, Andy launched his first mobile phone, EssentialPhone. To this day, this phone, which is always associated with the "father of Android", is still sought after by junk people, but Essential's poor product design and unreasonable official price did not allow enough Android users to recharge their faith, and Essential soon declared bankruptcy.
In 2021, some members of the Essential team once again tested the mobile phone market with the OSMO brand and officially announced their first mobile phone, OSOMOV1. However, the story of their comeback is still full of thorns. In June last year, OSOM announced that OV1 was officially renamed, and the name of the protagonist of this article surfaced-Saga.
The previous generation flagship processor of Snapdragon 8+, dual cameras, and the back fingerprint module that has not appeared on flagship phones since the end of the Snapdragon 845 era (Qualcomm flagship chips have been iterated 7 times since then, and have gone through a complete cycle from ice dragon to fire dragon and then ice dragon). At a time when Sony has stuffed a 5000mah battery into a body of less than 190g, he has made a small 4200mah battery weigh a full 247g. From the parameters, a series of incredible combinations, coupled with a price of $1,000, it feels worth at least five "good guy" exclamations. This time, is Saga going to make users suffocate for "belief"?
With a lot of questions in my mind, I played with this phone for a few days. Although the overall lack of hardware has nailed its upper limit to a not very high level, some novel attempts may really attract a small number of digital geeks who will be "killed" by curiosity.
Getting back to the topic, let me start with the core part of Saga’s product premium - "Solana ecosystem" and "seed library + dApp application store".
(PS: If you are more interested in the product itself, you can also skip the next chapter and read the regular unboxing part first, but a friendly reminder, after skipping and reading, please remember to come back to this position and read about the most important reason why Saga was able to change from OV1 to Saga.) Solana, seed library... everything you can't see on ordinary mobile phones
The Seed Vault hosting solution is an important feature that you will notice when you first open Saga and activate it. The wallet mnemonics will be stored in a local secure environment and support fingerprint quick signature and other operations. During the activation of the phone, you will be prompted to create or bind a Solana wallet. Users who are familiar with wallet operations should not have any obstacles and can just import the mnemonics.
The default supported wallets include Phantom and Solflare. There is no threshold for wallet binding. When the seed library has been set up, only fingerprint verification and confirmation is required.
After binding, you can receive 20USDC and 0.01SOL tokens, which are used to lower the threshold for new users to experience Solana ecosystem applications. In addition, you can also receive the Saga commemorative NFT airdrop.
As of the time of writing, the mobile phone’s built-in dApp application market has launched 36 applications, covering wallets, DeFi, NFT, social, audio and video, games, and browsers.
I had a brief experience with MagicEden. Signature verification using fingerprints is very simple, but errors occasionally occur during the verification process, and I need to try one or two more times. It will take more time to verify whether it is caused by an isolated network problem.
In addition to the listed applications, Saga also supports calling SeedVault to quickly link the wallet and interact with it after directly opening the Solana application in the browser. However, compared with the listed dApp applications, the probability of failure of this operation is higher, and some applications also have the situation where clicking the connect wallet button is completely invalid.
When I downloaded an app from the dApp market, Google Play warned me of risks. It turns out that Web2 and Web3 are incompatible (manual dog head.jpg).
I tried Mintyfresh, which was praised by the official. It is a dApp that converts pictures or camera shots into NFTs with one click. The interaction logic is very simple. Just connect your wallet, select pictures, and mint. However, I tested several pictures and they failed to be uploaded to the chain due to unknown errors. I was not able to solve the problem completely due to time constraints. At present, Web3 applications have indeed implemented some user-friendly functions, but the user experience problem is still a long way to go.
However, Saga at least shows us another possibility besides Apple AppStore and various Android app stores, a possibility that can bypass the complicated review process, allow creators and developers to release their imagination more directly, and further narrow the distance between application publishers and users. Isn’t this exactly what Web3 wants to achieve?
Starting from the most frequently used mobile phones, Solana simplifies the mobile interaction logic so that more people can directly access the excellent dApps in the on-chain ecosystem. Solana’s attempt may seem clumsy at the moment, but I think the future imagination space is worth looking forward to.
Open the box carefully
Next, forget the platform on which this article you are reading was published, and let’s return to the content of a normal mobile phone unboxing.
The size of the phone box shows that it should be environmentally friendly. Don’t even think about the charging head. The texture of the plastic seal is worrying. At least it is definitely not up to standard for a price of $1,000. However, Wild America may not care about these.
Compared with the sloppy plastic sealing, the pull-out method of the packaging itself is much more comfortable to handle, and it doesn't use a very stupid snap-on lid, so it deserves full marks.
I took out all of them and took photos as souvenirs. Apart from the phone itself, other things will probably never leave the cabinet again.
For the past six months, my main and backup devices have been the iPhone 12 pro + Flip 3 combination, so the first feeling I had when I got the Saga was that it was heavy. The texture of the whole machine is better than expected, the metal treatment of the frame is great, the 2.5D glass can ensure that there is no cutting feeling when sliding on the edge, and the frosted texture metal is much higher in anti-fingerprint ability than the bright stainless steel that Apple's pro series has used for several years, which makes people with obsessive-compulsive disorder feel much more comfortable. There is no need to elaborate on the feel of the ceramic back panel. Except that it is not as good as a few specially treated glasses in terms of anti-fingerprint, the warmth of the ceramic is obvious when you get it.
Although the bulge of Saga's rear camera module is not that high at a time when the image of mobile phones is curled up to the point of explosion and the mention of rear camera modules is becoming more and more outrageous, the bulge of Saga's rear camera is not that high, but because the module is in the shape of a triangle, the bottom of the bulge is a relatively small corner of a triangle. When the screen is placed face up on the desktop, the shaking is noticeable. If you are willing to add a phone case, the problem can basically be solved. However, I searched on Taobao and really couldn't find a phone case. In addition, the phone itself is already heavy enough, so I'd better go naked.
A big regret on the front is that the front camera is not coated in black. I even suspect that it is designed in the style of a silver ring. This behavior of blatantly destroying the integrity is a bit confusing.
The three side buttons are painted green to add a lively feeling, but firstly, green seems to have nothing to do with Solana, and secondly, the power button is so small and placed in the prime position of the right thumb. I have frequently misoperated the volume and power buttons in the past few days, and the bonus points have been successfully brought back to a level of no fault.
Turn on the computer.
Activation requires a scientific Internet connection, otherwise the WiFi will keep reminding that the network cannot be accessed, even if you skip online activation and enter the system directly. But in fact, there is no problem accessing websites within the Great Firewall, so I don’t need to continue to explain what you can do.
The system is a standard native Android, it comes with Android 13. I don’t know how many major version upgrades the official can push. It only comes with the full Google package, nothing else, which is very comfortable.
The screen has three refresh rate options (60, 90, and 120). At first glance, the screen looks fine enough. After all, the resolution of 2400✖1080 can be called a 2K screen for domestic manufacturers.
However, the colors of this screen are a bit exaggerated, with a serious red cast against light backgrounds, and this is the case at all brightness levels. I feel like this is why the machine is in dark mode by default. As a light color fan, I obediently switched back to dark mode after using it for a few hours.
It takes about 15-16 times to enter a finger on the rear fingerprint reader, which is not a surprising "nostalgic" operation.
As for the camera, the main camera is the IMX766 that Huawei has polished to perfection, but apart from the algorithm, this is already more than two years old, so don't expect too much. The wide-angle camera is the IMX373, which is the sensor used in the front camera of the Xiaomi 6X released 5 years ago. You can tell whether it is "retro" or not. I took a few random samples, not looking at the composition but only the color reproduction.
The overall style is a standard saturation warrior. It is not surprising that the 766 does not have Huawei's algorithm and is old. The large red in Figure 4 is a mess under this operation. The details are not good under abundant light. The uploaded image is compressed several times, and it is estimated that the details cannot be seen. The stamens in the original image in Figure 2 have a more obvious oil painting feeling. In this scene that a thousand-yuan phone can handle, the main camera part has a gap of one eye. The antique wide-angle and night scene are really not worth looking forward to. I will simply post two sample photos for you to see.
This wide-angle lens has excellent image quality in the center and edges, as well as in the edge anti-distortion algorithm and anti-purple fringing. It perfectly presents the image quality level of front cameras 5 years ago.
What should I say about the night scene? Ehmmmm, because I turned on the night scene mode in a not-so-dark environment and got the picture on the left, and the one on the right was just randomly pressed using the S23Ultra default mode, so I don’t know what to say.
An interesting point to add is that Saga missed some changes when customizing the system, and a little bit of the OSMO product name was left in the camera.
With such a large screen + high refresh rate and a small battery of less than 4200mAh, the battery life is bound to be poor. The daily screen time is basically about 4 hours. If you sit at a desk every day and have access to a charger, it is not a big problem. Once you go out, it will add to your anxiety. The charging speed is still far behind that of domestic Android phones. This amount of power should be used in the ceramic and middle frame.
One bigger problem is that although the phone supports wireless charging, the position of the wireless charging coil needs to be found very accurately. The Xiaomi 80W I am using is very friendly to the iPhone and Samsung in my hand, and I can charge it with peace of mind by basically throwing it anywhere, but the Saga must be placed very straight, and it often disconnects during charging, which makes the user experience very embarrassing.
As for the external speaker, front-end effects and gaming experience, I will not elaborate on them here. Judging from the temperature control performance, it is an 8+ performance without too many restrictions. Games at the benchmark software level such as Genshin Impact can definitely be played with an 8+ foundation, but you certainly can't play them comfortably all the time. I believe that no one will use a mobile phone with such a small battery as the main gaming machine, and there is limited significance in elaborating on non-positioning usage scenarios.
Summary
If we exclude the support of the Solana ecosystem, according to the current pricing ideas of domestic Android phones, a machine with an old flagship chip, even taking into account the 12+512 configuration combination, the ceramic back cover and the workmanship, such a small battery and screen performance, the reasonable price is unlikely to exceed RMB 3,000. This means that more than half of the price of this phone needs to be reflected through the Solana ecosystem.
Therefore, are you willing to pay for this deeply integrated interactive experience and Solana ecosystem applications? Or are you willing to pay to try to break the homogeneous internal circulation status quo of the mobile phone market by opening up on-chain application channels? These are the questions you really need to think about before buying this phone.
However, after a simple three-day experience, I have already put the mobile phone card in Flip3 into Saga, and let it become my main Android phone. After all, as a digital product enthusiast, what I want is that the technical iteration of the mobile phone will not make the product more and more boring. Even if it is wishful thinking, I am willing to pay for that little bold attempt. Saga is not good enough, but it has given me the desire to "play" with a mobile phone that I have not felt in recent years. Next, Solana ecosystem, look forward to more surprises.