Dubai: Since Edward Snowden’s revelations about government eavesdropping and top software companies collecting users’ mobile data and selling it to third parties for marketing purposes, privacy, control and security are big issues in today’s smartphone world.
To tackle these issues, encrypted communications firm Silent Circle and Spanish smartphone maker Geeksphone have teamed up to launch a new privacy-minded encrypted smartphone — Blackphone — that runs on PrivatOS, a stripped-down version of Android KitKat operating system that closes all security loopholes found in the software to keep the data private.
“We use the open source of Android as the origin and we made a number of changes but it looks and feels similar to Android,” Toby Weir-Jones, CEO of Blackphone, told Gulf News.
He said the calls are encrypted using cryptographic keys and the data do not pass through a central network. Apart from this, even emails and texts are encrypted, and internet access is offered via virtual private network.
“What we are doing is bringing the best hardware and software tools together on a single device and make them simple and approachable,” he said.
He said that there is no major difference to a user when using a Blackphone or a smartphone and the way it works. They don’t need to learn a “lot of skills to operate this device” and take advantage of this device.
There are many cryptophones available in the market but both the ends need to have cryptophones to have a secure connection.
In this device, he said that even if one end has a Blackphone and the other end an iPhone, users can still use the Silent Phone app available on app stores and can talk safely and securely between the two.
“We don’t gather information like others. That is why we avoided Google Play store and a lot of underlined Google services because users can be tracked. Many of these apps take the liberties of the users,” he said.
Right now the phone ships with around 30 standard preloaded apps.
“We are working on our app store and that will be for security and privacy tools. If a user wants to add additional apps, the easiest way is to download the app stores on the phone like Amazon.com,” he said.
The $629 Blackphone began shipping in June and will be available in the Middle East before end of the year.
The 4.7-inch 4G LTE device is powered by a 2 GHz quad‐core CPU, 1GB DDR3 RAM, 16GB of storage, 8MP rear and 5MP front cameras.
The company is working with Dubai-based distributor Big on Telecom to bring the devices to the region as soon as possible.
The Silent Phone, Disconnect VPN service and Silent Text apps are already available on apps stores for a premium but Weir-Jones said the value comes with the service bundles — one year of Silent Circle, one year of Disconnect VPN service, one year Silent Circle app for your friends and family and one year of Spideroak online storage – offered with the purchase.
“We want consumers to make their own decisions as it is your phone and you ought to have control of the device. The key distinction of Blackphone is that everything is available on a single device. And as a Swiss company, we are protected by the Swiss privacy laws, which give our customers much stronger protections than many other jurisdictions,” he said.
“Even if I don’t sell 10 million Balckphones in the next three months in the Middle East, there are still large of number of other smartphones in the market that I can communicate with the right away with the apps,” he said.
The company’s expectations for next year is to grow close to twenty times compared to this year in terms of volume.
“We are working on a family of devices. Our next device will be a secured tablet but we don’t have the timing or the final decision on the specs,” he said.
