Blackphone: an Android phone that puts privacy first

[techbeck]

 

 

This is Blackphone. It's a smartphone born out of a growing desire for privacy, as months of leaks have proven that agencies like the NSA are monitoring our communications. It runs Android, which many might perceive as a relatively insecure mobile operating system; its makers, however, have made significant changes both visible and behind the scenes. They've relabeled it "PrivatOS."

 

The Blackphone looks like a fairly standard Android phone. It has a 4.7-inch HD (the exact resolution has yet to be announced) IPS display, a 2GHz quad-core processor, 16GB of storage, an 8-megapixel camera, LTE ? pretty much everything you'd want in a smartphone, and very little you wouldn't. Produced by Silent Circle, a company with an existing portfolio of security- and encryption-related software, and Geeksphone, a Spanish hardware startup, the Blackphone claims to be the first smartphone to place "privacy and control directly in the hands of its users." How it achieves this is through a mixture of secure applications and Android modifications that give users more insight into and control over what third-party applications are doing with their data.

 

 

MORE:  http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/24/5441642/blackphone-silent-circle-geeksphone-pre-order-launch

[PNWDweller]

Interesting idea for the phone.  They want you to pay to have the secure communications so a subscription service to ensure peer to peer communication. 

 

I'm all for security and such, but honestly - you can probably secure your phone just as much without the hardware and OS they are offering for much less.