A Smartphone for Consumers Who Want Privacy

IF there’s a symbol for the idea that privacy is on people’s minds, it’s the Blackphone.

The Blackphone, which went on sale this week for $629, is billed as the first smartphone built solely with privacy and security in mind. It is definitely more secure than your average phone, but comes with trade-offs that most consumers might not need or enjoy. It’s probably best for reporters, dissidents and companies concerned with corporate security.

The phone is a collaboration between the Spanish phone maker GeeksPhone and Silent Circle, a communications security company. It offers a pleasingly subtle industrial design, is extremely lightweight and has impressive if not outstanding specs. And it sits between an iPhone 5S and a Samsung Galaxy S5 in size.

But compared to those smartphones, the Blackphone offers a very different experience.

The phone runs on a modified version of Android, Google’s mobile operating system. And it definitely trades some conveniences for security.

If you have ever logged into a Google or Apple iCloud account on a new phone, for example, you are accustomed to having information like contacts and apps downloaded automatically from the cloud. The Blackphone, by contrast, will feel like a blank and slightly confusing slate.

The phone does not include any Google services, because Google doesn’t endorse PrivatOS, the operating system on the Blackphone. So there’s no Google Play store, no maps or navigation or the other Google niceties you’re accustomed to using.

The lack of Google services could be a selling point for people who think Google knows far too much about our lives. But it’ll still be quite a change.

To get some of the services that make a smartphone so useful, try the Amazon App Store, where you’ll find common apps like Twitter, Instagram or Netflix. (Use the browser to search for Amazon App Store and you can download and install it relatively easily.)

When you install apps, you’ll immediately notice security benefits. PrivatOS lets you select specific permissions for each app — a feature that existed briefly in the latest version of Android, called KitKat, but which Google removed.

After Facebook is installed and opened, a screen called App Permission Details appears, where users choose whether to allow access to the camera, audio, contacts, location, calendar, texting, call logs and more.

Best of all, the entirety of that access is turned off by default when the app is installed. In contrast, when I installed Facebook from the Google Play store on a Samsung Galaxy S5, the installation screen said that Facebook would have access to all those elements of the phone. It then turned them all on by default — with no way to turn them off except removing the app.

Those are everyday privacy features I’d like to see come back to Android and arrive on iOS.

The Blackphone also includes deeper levels of security. You can encrypt all of the data on the phone, so that even if someone finds it and breaks through your PIN or password, the information is still unreadable. Some features are available on other phones, but they are front and center on Blackphone, like the ability to remotely remove data from the phone if it is lost or stolen.

And the phone comes loaded with secure communications tools offered by Silent Circle. The tools include Silent Circle’s private calling and messaging services, Silent Phone and Silent Text, as well as Silent Contacts (once you load contacts onto the phone). It includes a two-year subscription to the Silent Circle service, which normally costs $13 to $40 a month.

You’ll also get three one-year subscriptions to Silent Circle to hand out to friends, which is good, since your conversations are completely encrypted only if the other person is using Silent Phone, too. Similarly, your friends will need to use Silent Text for encrypted texting.

The phone also includes Disconnect Secure Wireless for private searching, anonymous browsing and for setting up a virtual private network to use the web more securely. And there’s secure cloud storage and file transfer services from SpiderOak.

Unfortunately, Silent Circle’s suite doesn’t include an email app, so while you can download Android email encryption apps like Virtru or Cipher, your email isn’t secure out of the box.

Another thing worth noting: Right now, the phone is available only as an unlocked device, meaning that it doesn’t come tied to a specific carrier. It will work only on cellular networks that use GSM technology, like T-Mobile, AT&T and some prepaid carriers. It will not work on the Verizon or Sprint networks. No carrier offers a subsidy.

I don’t doubt Blackphone’s security — the founding team has strong credentials and the phone neatly ties in effective tools for more private communication. I do doubt that most people need a phone as secure as the Blackphone. But hopefully some of its good security hygiene will leak into other devices and software we use every day.