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Product review – Blackphone

In today’s endless stream of hacks and data breaches, setting up a strong security device is a must. For your safety, Blackphone might be the best for you.

Private by design, Blackphone is a smartphone made by Silent Circle, a secure communications company offering software applications, mobile devices, and communication management services to enterprise. Its target market focuses more on buyers at enterprise businesses over ordinary users, stressing that employees often conduct business using private devices and services that are not secure so there’s a need for a level of privacy control that far exceeds that of regular Android phones.

In previous blog post, we discussed about the light phone and its usages. Let us discuss about one that has the opposite name: Black phone.

Tl; dr;

Blackphone is an Android phone made by Silent Circle. It promises a fully private and encrypted experience with built-in encrypted voice, text and video features. Its market focuses more on buyers at enterprise businesses over ordinary users, free of bloatware and contains no hooks to mobile carriers and leaked data.

Blackphone

Designed for optimal privacy, Blackphone is a solid handset that runs as a heavily modified version of Android.

The following are its high-end features (in general):

• It helps enterprises prevent privacy related issues with regards to intellectual property, reputation and social trust.

• It uses a powerful operating system called, “Silent OS” (the renamed successor to the “PrivatOS“). It is puts privacy at your reach free from bloatware, hooks to carriers, and leaky data putting you and your enterprise in safe hands without compromising productivity.

• Enabling both work and personal life, Blackphone allows you to create up to four (4) separate spaces that act like virtual phones, ensuring that your apps and data always remain secure.

• It has a Smarter Wi-Fi Manager that’s fully automated to ensure your phone is only connecting to networks when you know you want to use Wi-Fi, and that you aren’t leaking your activities from advertisers and retailers, or even hostile honey-pot networks.

• It has a Privacy Meter embedded in Silent OS that continuously checks device’s configuration and status, notifying the Blackphone user if there are any element that could compromise the security and privacy of your data.

• Blackphone uses a premium software application called “Silent Phone.” Built by Silent Circle, it allows subscription members to communicate securely with end-to-end encryption including voice calls, video calls, conference calling, messaging, and file transfer on iOS, Android, and SilentOS devices around the globe.

Silent Phone doesn’t use Variable Bit Rate (VBR) codecs, because there’s a possibility that it could leak information.

Blackphone 2

Source: ZDNet

The company’s second generation security phone. Blackphone 2 is a more enhanced model from its predecessor having bolstering privacy and security features.

Blackphone 2 offers the following:

• The Blackphone 2 Security Centre is a control panel that allows users to control notifications and permissions accordingly from individual apps, unknown sources, privacy levels, accounts and encryption settings.

• It has a 1.7GHz octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 processor and 3GB of internal RAM, with a crisp and sharp high-definition display.

• It supports Google Apps and Android for Work, as well as the usual email services, including Microsoft Exchange.

Summary

Blackphone is a military grade smart phone made by Silent Circle. It promises a fully private and encrypted experience with built-in encrypted voice, text and video features. Its market focuses more on buyers at enterprise businesses over ordinary users, stressing that employees often conduct business using private devices and services that are not secure so there’s a need for a level of privacy control that far exceeds that of regular Android phones.

By Tuan Nguyen