Whether classed as the device for the clinically paranoid or the suitably vigilant, the Blackphone is a compelling reason to surface from the Android seas. Periscope up!
What we're looking at is a phone that's well-timed if nothing else. In recent years Earth's paranoia has been inflated like it was some sort of mad blue-green balloon having a panic attack in space, and we're all now super vigilant about protecting our privacy. (Aren't we?)
The Blackphone addresses this by encrypted your calls and messages; protecting your radios (Wi-Fi etc) from being logged as you wander the streets; encrypting the device so that if it does land in the hands of a cretin -- or the government -- it's a as good as useless; and forcing the new user to set the system up with the fullest level of security possible, from pin code to device-wide encryption with unlock keys only you know.
It's not "NSA-proof", and anyone advising you they have a product that is should be considered unfit to trust. Or just ignorant. But it's been developed with high levels of privacy control in mind and it's just been made available for pre-order, with delivery due in the summer worldwide.
Based on Android primarily, Blackphone has been in development for just under a year and is a joint collaboration between Geeksphone and Silent Circle -- the former, a Spanish developer of largely Mozilla-based phones; the latter, an encrypted communications software firm.
The device itself, which Wired.co.uk received an early demo of at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona by Blackphone's 21-year-old CEO Javier Agüera, is simple but elegant. Pictured here in a prototype form with "many" changes expected to the physical design, we saw a user interface that was uncluttered and largely unmodified from the stock Android UI it builds upon.
Silent Circle apps for calls and texting are present on the homescreen once the device's setup process is complete, which takes a few minutes but was very straightforward and well-explained by on-screen prompts. From then on calls and messages made to other devices with Silent Circle's apps installed (available on numerous platforms) will be encrypted, end to end.
On the hardware side the phone features a 4.7-inch LCD touchscreen, a 2GHz quad-core CPU, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, 4G LTE and an 8-megapixel camera. Software included spans Silent Circle's contacts, phone and messaging apps, Blackphone's own firewall and remote wipe tools, plus others from third parties including SpiderOak's secure file storage service and Kismet's Smart Wi-Fi manager to make sure the phone's Wi-Fi chip only fires up when you're in a trusted area -- everywhere else, Wi-Fi is disabled so device-tracking wireless beacons cannot trace our location.
The Blackphone will be available worldwide in the summer and pre-order went live today, costing $629 (£377) including shipping to any country. It comes with two years of service for Silent Circle (usage will cost per year after that), but is bundled with three licenses to give friends and families access to the service for one year each.
This caveat may be a roadblock for some people thinking Blackphone will keep every call and every text away from all possible prying eyes, all the time -- not unless everyone ever called has a Silent Circle license. But combined with other features baked into the Android installation it's certainly looking like a user-friendly way to better secure one's own privacy in the real-world, and in a nice design with decent specs.
Periscope down. That's all to see for now.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
