Silent Circle of US and Geekphone of Spain, have announced a new Switzerland-based joint venture and would be launching Blackphone, the world’s first smartphone with privacy features, at the upcoming Mobile World Congress(MWC) in February in Barcelona, Spain. Blackphone is unlocked and will work with any GSM carrier. It has the features necessary to do all the things you need, as well as all the things you want, while maintaining your privacy and security and giving you the freedom to choose your carrier, your apps, and your location.
Blackphone, powered by a security-oriented Android build named PrivatOS, is a carrier- and vendor-independent smartphone giving individuals and organizations the ability to make and receive secure phone calls, exchange secure texts, transfer and store files, and video chat without compromising user privacy on the device.
The Blackphone has been developed with the efforts of Co-founder & President of Silent Circle,creator of PGP and Zfone/ZRTP, and Javier Agüera, co-founder & CEO of Geeksphone, and the team of both the companies. Silent Circle is a global encrypted communications service headquartered in Washington D.C. providing a peer-to-peer platform for encrypted voice, video, text and file transfer on mobile devices via a secure, proprietary network, software and mobile apps. Geeksphone is a Spanish Company headquartered in Madrid and specializing in the development, promotion and commercialization of “open source” mobile telephony solutions. Geeksphone pioneered the industry by becoming the first European brand to launch an Android smartphone in 2009, and launched the world’s first Firefox OS powered smartphone in 2013.
“I have spent my whole career working towards the launch of secure telephony products,” said Zimmermann. “Blackphone provides users with everything they need to ensure privacy and control of their communications, along with all the other high-end smartphone features they have come to expect.”
According to the company, Blackphone is the world’s first smartphone which prioritizes the user’s privacy and control, without any hooks to carriers or vendors. It comes preinstalled with all the tools one need to move throughout the world, conduct business, and stay in touch, while shielding you from prying eyes.
The company has not revealed hardware details of the Blackphone, and the same will be known at MWC, and the pre-order will begin there itself.
Wait for few more days to see one more entrant to the smartphone arena!
Relatively few will opt to pay for their electronic privacy. Threadthat dot com offers protection for free. TT is not as private as complicated client-side encryption solutions that require software installation, but it is a PDG (pretty damn good) server-side encryption solution that is easy enough for anyone to use.