With all of the news that's come out lately concerning Edward Snowden and the NSA, security is a hot topic of discussion. Geeksphone and Silent Circle plan to take advantage of this focus on privacy by launching a new device called the Blackphone, a privacy-focused device with support for secure calls, text messages and data transmissions.
The Blackphone is powered by a custom version of Android known as PrivatOS. The software is described as being "the Android that you are familiar with, which includes all of the available apps," but with an added layer of security for things like encrypted messages. Details on the Blackphone hardware are pretty light at this point, but the company behind the device says that benchmarks place Blackphone "among the top performers from any manufacturer."
Obviously there's still a lot that we don't know about the Blackphone and how it operates, but the claim that it offers a familiar Android experience with an added layer of security is intriguing. Silent Circle is a company that's focused on encryption and offering secure voice, video, text and file transfers, so I don't doubt that it's going to ensure that the Blackphone's got some pretty beefy security for its users.
The good news is that the Blackphone is slated to be officially unveiled and made available for pre-order on Feb. 24 at MWC, so it won't be long before more details are revealed. Until then, you can check out a video introduction to Blackphone below.
Via Blackphone (1), (2)
