You’re correct about Saxon Math being a popular choice for homeschoolers. As to the phonics, I can’t say.
Our school was too cheap to buy the Math but I think they did finally buy maybe one year of the Phonics the year my son was in 1st grade, he’s in 10th now. BUT he got the unlucky draw of the worst teacher we’ve ever had . . . ya know the one they keep moving from grade to grade to grade but won’t fire. It took him a year or two to recover and while he does usually make all A’s he doesn’t do the advanced classes that daughter did. Also had a less than stellar K teacher so two bad years in a row really was tough. Otherwise we have had some very good teachers, especially DD with her AP classes in high school.