Blackphone PrivatOS Android Smartphone

Blackphone is the first smartphone designed to offer the best privacy and security for consumers or business. Silent Circle and Geeksphone have partnered to combine best-of-breed hardware with all the skills and experience necessary to offer PrivatOS, an Android based operating system, configured to prevent unauthorized surveillance, commercial exploitation of activity data, and the loss of privacy, security and fundamental human rights. SGP Technologies is Swiss joint venture of Silent Circle and Geeksphone.

Blackphone is powered by a >2 GHz quad-core SoC and features a full set of premium features, such as a 4.7″ HD IPS screen, LTE, HSPA+, 2GB DDR3 RAM, 16GB of storage, >8MP primary camera with flash and 1.3MP front camera, Bluetooth 4.0, 802.11n WiFi, GPS, and more. Th company says certain specifications are subject to change and may be adjusted prior to shipping the first phones later this year.

Blackphone comes unlocked and features several pre-installed privacy tools, all of which are fully enabled for at least two years of usage. These tools include the Silent Circle suite of apps, including Silent Phone, Silent Text, and Silent Contacts; anonymous search, private browsing, and VPN from Disconnect; and secure cloud file storage from SpiderOak. In addition, Blackphone ships with the Smart WiFi Manager from Mike Kershaw, Chief Architect for SGP Technologies, and a powerful remote-wipe and device recovery tool.

“I have spent my whole career working to uphold the objectives of privacy,” said Phil Zimmermann, Co-Founder of Silent Circle and author of PGP. “Now that the mobile technologies are mature enough, we couldn’t be more proud of the launch of Blackphone, the first mainstream, fully-integrated secure communications phone, designed for anyone to use as easily as the legacy phones they’re used to already.”

Price and Availability
Blackphone is expected to be released June 2014. It is now available for pre-order at https://www.blackphone.ch to individuals and enterprises as an unlocked device with a starting price of $629 (USD), and will also be available through selected partner carriers from launch, including KPN Mobile, the inaugural launch carrier for Blackphone serving European regions including Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. Customers will always have the option of buying direct rather than through a carrier if that is their preference.

Blackphone also includes 3 separate 1-year ‘Friends and Family’ subscriptions for the Silent Circle suite, ensuring that every Blackphone customer will be able to speak securely with trusted friends and family with Apple or Android phones from their first day of ownership.

Existing Silent Circle users can add an additional two years of use to an existing subscriptions, or initiate new subscriptions at the time of activating their new phone. Provisioning and subscription management will be handled on the phone itself via the Blackphone Activation Wizard. In addition, PrivatOS offers frequent Secure Over-The-Air (SOTA) updates directly from SGP Technologies, rather than relying on carriers to approve and release updates. Blackphone will also ship with the Blackphone Activation Wizard and the Blackphone Security Center.