Crypto Phones Struggle as Solana Quietly Pulls Plug on Saga

Solana Mobile has quietly ended software and security support for its first-generation Saga phone, quietly closing the device’s lifecycle just over two years after its May 2023 debut and leaving roughly 20,000 active units without further updates.

Marketed around an on-device Seed Vault, the smartphone briefly drew mainstream attention when memecoin airdrops made preloaded wallets unusually valuable.

Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko unveils the Saga in 2022

Despite the initial frenzy, demand never matched the makers’ ambitions: Saga launched at roughly $1,000 and, just four months after launch, was discounted to about $599 as sales slowed. The Defiant reviewed the smartphone at the time.

Even YouTuber Marques Brownlee, who has over 20 million subscribers and a track record reviewing Apple and Microsoft flagships, slammed it as a “failure of 2023.”

With support for Saga now ended, Solana Mobile is shifting its focus to its second-generation phone, Seeker, which began shipping earlier this August as a more affordable and accessible successor.

Solana Labs didn’t respond to The Defiant’s request for comment.

Hopping Between Networks

The rest of the crypto-phone field isn’t faring much better. Supported by both Aptos and Sei, JamboPhone aimed for affordability with a $99 sticker price and a preloaded Web3 stack.

“Priced at just $99 and already available in over 40 countries, the JamboPhone is more than a device; it’s a bridge to the Aptos ecosystem, seamlessly integrated through pre-installed applications such as Petra, a leading Aptos-compatible wallet, and the Jambo App,” the Aptos Foundation wrote in a February 2024 blog post.

Jambo Phone

Launched in 2023, the phone runs on Unisoc’s T606 chip with two aging A75 cores and six weaker A55s, a setup reviewers slammed as sluggish and outdated.

“[…] the A75 big core is already at the level of a small core in the Snapdragon 690, a mid-to-low-end chip released by Qualcomm in 2020. The performance level that was barely acceptable eight years ago is now a disaster,” BlockBeats wrote in a review.

User feedback painted a similar picture, citing laggy performance, fragile construction, and minimal after-sales support.

“Software is glitchy. It runs stock Android, but the performance is like a 5-year-old phone. UI lags, apps freeze, not what you’d expect in the current smartphone era,” one customer wrote.

Unlike Saga, Jambo’s software still receives updates — the latest version of the Jambo app rolled out on Oct. 14 — but the issues haven’t stopped piling up. On the application’s Google Play page, users complain of weak airdrop bonuses, unresponsive support, and region restrictions on redeeming rewards.

Having raised $30 million in Series A funding from Paradigm, Pantera Capital, Coinbase Ventures, OKX Ventures, and others, the Jambo Labs team went even further and launched the project’s own J token.
Pitched as the native token that “ties together the Jambo ecosystem,” the J token has lost over 94% of its value since launching in February, per data from CoinGecko.

J Chart

Shortly after debuting the JamboPhone, developers launched JamboPhone 2, focusing on Solana.

The Defiant reached out to Jambo Labs but didn’t hear back.

Premium for Web3

Binance-backed CoralApp took a more premium path. The project was incubated in Binance Labs’ Season 4 program as a “fitness platform and marketplace built on blockchain technology.”

Although CoralApp never officially labeled the CoralPhone launched in 2024 as a BNB-focused device, the Binance army widelypromoted it as such. Early buyers were offered limited “early-bird” tiers, with reports putting the price around 1,500 USDT.

CoralPhone

CoralPhone specifications indicate a Snapdragon-class chipset, a 120 Hz AMOLED display and a 50MP main sensor, competent but not on par with Apple’s latest devices.

For comparison, even Apple’s iPhone 17 Pro Max starts at $1,199 for the 256 GB base configuration and stretches toward $1,999 for the top 2 TB option, meaning CoralPhone’s ~$1,500 early price would sit about $300 above the Apple base model.

Although the team claims to have shipped more than 10,000 devices, The Defiant couldn’t independently verify that figure. The Defiant also reached out to the CoralApp team but didn’t receive a response.

So while crypto phones keep promising a decentralized tech future, so far all they’ve proven is that airdrops don’t build ecosystems and hype doesn’t patch firmware.

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