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Silent Circle Blackphone - Out in June for $630 US

posted by mattie_p on Monday February 24 2014, @03:29PM   Printer-friendly
from the security-will-cost-you dept.

fliptop writes:

"Promising that orders will start shipping in June, Silent Circle has announced the Blackphone is ready for pre-orders. (Domain registered in Switzerland)

Touted as 'The high-end smartphone which puts privacy and security ahead of everything else' the Blackphone has a 4.7" screen, 2GHz quad-core CPU and 16GB storage. It also includes several Silent Circle apps.

The Blackphone makes use of a customized version of Android called PrivatOS, is fully unlocked, and the encryption can be used on any compatible network. Purchase includes a 1-year subscription to the apps; after that it's $10 a month (in addition to your carrier's charges).

In order to take advantage of the encryption, the other person you're communicating with has to have their own Blackphone or use Silent Circle apps on their Android or iOS phone."

 
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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Open4D on Monday February 24 2014, @03:58PM

    by Open4D (371) on Monday February 24 2014, @03:58PM (#6113) Journal

    I've heard that many unofficial Android distros have an issue with the Google Apps ("GApps") e.g. http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Google_Apps [cyanogenmod.org]

    Normally if you don't have access to these Google Apps then you could be said to be missing out. Without the Google Play Store app, for example, it may be difficult to get hold of the 1,000,000+ apps it contains. And many people appreciate the functionality of the GMail, Maps, and Google Drive apps, for example.

    But given the privacy-oriented nature of this particular phone, I suppose committed Google customers are not their main target market.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by mtrycz on Tuesday February 25 2014, @05:47AM

    by mtrycz (60) on Tuesday February 25 2014, @05:47AM (#6513)

    1. Google's core business (Billions of $) is spying people then selling ads.

    2. They couldn't immagine a better way to spy than a cellphone, that's why they invested in Android ("golden nugget")

    3. With this, you're multi-hundred-dollar device hands dato on you to your carrier (obvious), to Google (through GApps), and to the NSA (through syping on GApps and other (always) + request to carrier (ondemand)).
    4. Not having GAapps will at least get rid of your data going to Google and NSA-spying-Google, (while the rest will remain, and is only evitable but not having a phone).