The OSOM OV1, an Android phone launching from the same folks who brought you the Essential Phone, is now being rebranded as a blockchain phone. Dubbed the Solana Saga, it has all the 2022-era flagship specs you’d expect, a 2023 launch date, and a $1,000 starting price with a $100 pre-order deposit.
The Saga phone has all the makings of an excellent Android phone. It has a 6.67-inch OLED display, 12 GB of RAM paired with 512GB of storage, and it’s all powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1. There’s no word on the battery or charging capabilities though, and the phone’s design is hidden. The key selling point of this model is support for web3 (or crypto) capabilities. If your vocabulary is full of words like gas money and airdrop, this is the phone for you.
“Almost 7 billion people use smartphones around the world and more than 100 million people hold digital assets — and both of those numbers will continue to grow,” said Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana in a press release. “Saga sets a new standard for the web3 experience on mobile.”
“We chose the Saga name because the story of crypto is still being written,” said Raj Gokal, co-founder of Solana. “This is the next chapter of this narrative and we believe opening up crypto to mobile will lead to greater adoption, better understanding, and more opportunities.”
Alongside the Saga, Solana is also introducing Solana Mobile Stack, a software development kit that would allow for native web3 apps on Android platforms. The Saga would be the first phone to support it natively.
“Developers have been blocked for too long from creating truly decentralized mobile apps because the existing gatekeeper model just doesn’t work anymore,” said Yakovenko. “We live our lives on our mobile devices – except for web3 because there hasn’t been a mobile-centric approach to private key management. The Solana Mobile Stack shows a new path forward on Solana that is open source, secure, optimized for web3, and easy to use.”
It’s a bit of a strange phone, combining tech’s worst instincts to provide a uniquely curious device. It’s an enthusiast phone, but the launch is sufficiently far in the future that you could forget it. It has eye-catching specs that will be outdated by launch, and it’s laser-focused on meeting demand for a market that can charitably be described as a borderline scam. If this story sounds familiar, that’s because Solana isn’t the first to try its hand at this. HTC has also worked on a few crypto-focused phones of its own. One imagines that Solana will be equally successful. As for the company’s confidence levels in its own product, the Solana Saga is priced in U.S. Dollars and not Bitcoin. We’ll leave it there.
Are you tired of paying for streaming services you never watch just to get a phone plan feature you actually want? T-Mobile has good news for you! The carrier is rolling out new plans, called T-Mix, in early November to replace its old Experience lineup with a build-your-own perks system called Picks.
The benefits you choose vary from streaming and gaming to food delivery, AI, satellite service, and phone discounts. But if you are satisfied with your existing plan, you can keep it.
Merely days after the iPhone Duo hit the shelves, images of broken screens on the phone started popping up across social media. Until now, it’s been unclear what’s causing the line of defective pixels that appears vertically along the crease, as well as horizontally, on the phone’s inner display.
Apple has finally acknowledged the issue, which has shown up on iPhone Duo units owned by customers as well as demo units in stores. In a statement shared with Bloomberg, Apple says that not all iPhone Duo units are affected and that those that are tend to show the display fault early on. The company added that users who experience problems with their iPhone Duo display should contact AppleCare for a replacement.
Not long ago, Apple treated independent repair like an act of outright hostility. The Cupertino giant locked down parts with serial-number pairing, while repair tools remained firmly out of reach of anyone outside its authorized repair network. More importantly, the company waged a legal and lobbying battle against right-to-repair legislation.
I've covered enough of these fights over the years to know what a shift looks like. That's why what happened in October 2026 genuinely caught me off guard. The day the iPhone Duo went on sale, what may be the most mechanically complex iPhone to date, Apple pulled off a surprising about-face. It published teardown-style repair manuals for a handful of major components.