Encrypted selfies, anyone? Blackphone 2 times launch perfectly as hackers inspire fear and loathing

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Silent Circle chief Mike Janke with a smartphone similar in styling to the original encrypted Blackphone. Photo: AFP

Published: 4:55pm, 16 Jul 2015

The Blackphone 2, the highly anticipated next step in the smartphone series acclaimed for its ability to uphold users’ privacy, will offer a wide range of security features and apps when it is launched in Hong Kong in the upcoming months.

“Hong Kong will be one of the first markets in the world where we plan to launch Blackphone 2,” Javier Aguera, the chief scientist at Blackphone maker Silent Circle, told the South China Morning Post on the sidelines of the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Shanghai.

Aguera said Hong Kong’s role as an international business centre and reputation as one of the more advanced mobile markets worldwide made it a prime target for encrypted communications provider Silent Circle to introduce the new-generation Blackphone.

“Hong Kong has tight links with the financial sector, and we already have many financial institutions working with our solutions,” he said. “It will be a very good hub for us [in Asia-Pacific] because it is a market that is very keen on innovation.”

He declined to provide an exact launch date. Silent Circle’s website, however, showed that the Blackphone 2 will be commercially available this September in undisclosed markets.

The first-generation Blackphone was launched early last year by SGP Technologies amid much fanfare as the first smartphone with tools to counter unauthorised surveillance, commercial exploitation of activity data, and the loss of privacy. It was honoured by Time magazine as one of the “Best 25 Inventions of 2014”.

That model had pre-installed privacy tools, all of which are fully enabled for at least two years of usage. These include the Silent Circle suite of apps, including Silent Phone, Silent Text, and Silent Contacts; anonymous search, private browsing, and a virtual private network setup from Disconnect; and secure cloud file storage from SpiderOak.