After months of hype reportedly millions of pre-orders, the security-focused Blackphone started shipping to early pre-order customers on Monday.The Android-based smartphone comes packed with apps for encrypted voice, video, text messaging, as well as more control over the onboard information third-party apps can access.
ile pre-order phones are shipping now, new customers will be able to pony up $629 for their own Blackphone starting dnesday, ly 14 on the Blackphone website’s store.
A co-creation of Silent Circle Geeksphone, the Blackphone is a 4.7-inch hset running a security hardened version of Android 4.4 (KitKat) dubbed ivatOS. Secure messaging is hled by Silent Circle’s suite of Android apps, but complete encryption only happens when you are communicating with either another Blackphone user or someone using the Silent Circle apps.
The Blackphone also gives users full control over whether third-party apps can access data such as your address book, location, photo gallery. The only problem, as we noted in h, is that sometimes denying an app access to information means the app will crash fail to work properly.
Image: At the time, the companies said they were working on a fix for the issue.
Beyond apps messaging, Blackphone ships with anonymous web browsing, built-in virtual private network access, remote wipe tools, as well as SpiderOak’s encrypted cloud storage. The Blackphone also prevents -Fi hotspots from grabbing wireless location history, which could be used to track a users’ location history or travel patterns.
The phone itself is a pretty nice looking device, with a 720p I display, a 2GHz quad-core Nvidia Tegra 4i SoC, 1GB RAM, 16GB of onboard storage, a microSD slot supporting up to 128GB of additional storage, an 8 megapixel rear-facing camera, a 5Mfront-facing shooter. For connectivity you get Bluetooth 4.0, -Fi, E.
The Blackphone is one of several major security projects involving Silent Circle. The company is also working with dar vison, creator of vabit encrypted email, to create Dark Mail, an email stard that secures message contents as well as metadata.
