World’s First ‘NSA-Proof’ Android Smartphone is Here: Meet ‘Blackphone' - Specs, USP, Price, Release Date
Silent Circle, a company specializing in secure communications has built the one-of-a-kind 'secured Android smartphone' in the world named 'Blackphone.' The Blackphone is dubbed, rather cheekily as the 'NSA-proof' smartphone.
According to PCworld, Silent Circle's President and co-founder, Phill Zimmermann said, "the Blackphone is developed to protect users from 'driftnet fishing' for user information by organized crime and government entities such as the National Security Agency (NSA), but it can't defend against 'targeted' attacks."
Potential smartphone buyers with keen interest in keeping their mobile communications secure should check out this phone. According to BGR, the company announced recently that it has raised a new $30 million round of funding. During the MIT Technology Review Digital Summit, Silent Circle confirmed that the Blackphone will be shipped starting early July.
On the specifications front, the phone features a solid 4.7 inches screen with 720p display resolution and a black polycarbonate body. The handset is powered by a quad-core Tegra 4i processor clocked at 2 GHz and it houses 1 GB of RAM. The phone will come with 16 GB of internal storage with microSD card support. In addition, the Blackphone will house an 8 megapixel primary camera and a 5 megapixel secondary camera. Also, the phone can support global LTE.
What is Unique?
The unique selling point, however, is the under the hood custom software capability that makes this smartphone secure, compared to other available Android smartphones across the globe. According to Phone Arena, the Blackphone is developed to provide more control and power to the owners. Interestingly, this phone has the capability to 'mislead' an app in order to block access to unwanted apps. As an example, say a third-party app requests access to user's address book, but the app does not need user contacts to operate in general, the Blackphone will provide an empty list of contacts to the app. This way, the third-party app is made to believe that the contact information was provided by the Blackphone user. This interestingly unique smartphone is priced at US$629, which roughly translates to AU$671.
What do you think of this privacy-centric Android smartphone? Will you buy one? Feel free to leave a comment.