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Silent Circle Blackphone 2 and Blackphone+ tablet aim to beef up mobile privacy

Silent Circle has announced a sequel to its privacy-focused Blackphone, as well as a secure tablet.

Nate Ralph Associate Editor
Associate Editor Nate Ralph is an aspiring wordsmith, covering mobile software and hardware for CNET Reviews. His hobbies include dismantling gadgets, waxing poetic about obscure ASCII games, and wandering through airports.
Nate Ralph
2 min read

The privacy-focused Blackphone is getting a sequel: the Blackphone 2 reportedly boasts a faster processor paired with more RAM, a longer lasting battery, and a bigger display. You can also expect the privacy and security features that were the original device's raison d'être.

We got our first look at Silent Circle's Blackphone at last year's Mobile World Congress, and spent a bit more time with it at Las Vegas' DefCon. The Blackphone 2 will run PrivatOS 1.1, an

-based operating system that allows IT administrators to manage, lock and wipe devices when necessary. The device will also integrate with existing mobile device-management services like Citrix and Soti, so businesses needn't necessarily switch to a new, untested platform.

The phone has a 5.5-inch, 1,920x1,080-pixel screen protected by Gorilla Glass 3, a 64-bit octa-core processor and 3GB of memory. There's a non-removable quick-charging 3,060mAh battery, and expandable storage via a microSD port.

As well as being very locked down, the Blackphone 2 has plenty of power, with an octa-core processor and 3GB of RAM. Luke Westaway/CNET

The "Silent Suite" is central to the Blackphone 2 experience, offering automatic encryption of video and voice calls over a peer-to-peer VoIP service, encrypted messaging, an an automatically encrypted address book. Services like Silent Circle's Silent World will also allow subscribers to make encrypted calls to folks who haven't sprung for an encrypted device.

Silent Circle's security-minded variant of Google's Android operating system, PrivatOS, gets an update to version 1.1 that will arrive next week for the Blackphone 1.

Space defender

Silent Circle has added an interesting new security feature -- a virtualization system called Spaces that separates your work and personal activities on the phone into separate virtual-machine compartments, each of which can have its own passcode. This is designed to make it easier to wipe information from one part of your life without making the phone unusable, and also means you can let your kids borrow your phone (for instance), without worrying about them messing around with your private work documents.

Silent Circle has also the Blackphone+, a privacy- and security-focused

that will also be debuting later this year in the fall.

Outlook

It's early days yet, and the sample smartphone we were testing wasn't running any of the privacy-focused software that's really the phone's selling point. But if you're concerned about secrecy, you won't find many other phones that make these kinds of promises about keeping your communications away from prying eyes.

The Blackphone 2 will go on sale in July. Silent Circle says it's hoping to put its new mobile on sale for roughly the same price as its predecessor, which costs $629 (which equates to roughly £409 or AU$809). There's no word on where this phone will be sale yet though, so stay tuned for more news, and the full review.

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