Perhaps the OS is secure but the majority of Android apps, especially free ones, are ad plagued question marks. No wonder I am still using a Maemo5(Linux) Nokia N900, though I am recently exploring a tablet with Ubuntu Touch and eventually a Ubuntu phone.
(edit)Perhaps this phone comes with all the required and certified safe apps, though that could be quite limiting too. I miss the huge OSS app selection for the N900/Maemo5.
Wasn’t there a handful of security holes with the original Blackphone, as well?
If you buy this phone, the only assurance that it’s secure is the developer’s word. That’s it. You have to take it on faith alone. And even that isn’t good enough unless they’re present at the manufacture of every chip.
They could stick a few million lines of code on GitHub to make you feel like it’s auditable, but unless you compile it yourself you have no idea what’s actually on the phone, and even then it makes absolutely no difference unless you know the firmware on every single chip. We’re in an age where NSA was able to install radio-transmitting leaks into 100,000 computers, using a tiny chip embedded in a USB cable. Compared to that, hacking into the factory that’s flashing the code into the antenna module is trivial.
A phone built for security-paranoid people is an obvious target to attack. We’re in an age where you can build your own phone from off-the-shelf parts. If people are actually paranoid about security, that seems like a much safer option. Oh, but it won’t have the cool-sounding name Black Phone.
I wonder how better this really is compared to some similar-specced US$100 Xiaomi with some open-source security-minded custom ROM, or root, or jailbreak or whatever you cool hacker kids call this stuff.
If the baseband processor is properly separated in hardware, it could be even quite secure.
These things should come with schematics.
I want schematics for ALL THE DEVICES!
The closest thing right now is @dobby’s pet – the rebuilt n900…
Resources - Neo900
Neo900
It doesn’t come cheap – the estimate to replace the board of an existing n900 is ~990€
Out of my price bracket, sadly.
I remember, some 15 years ago, meeting a guy under a street lamp and getting handed over a stolen xeroxed manual for some Nokia like it was a drug deal. (I consulted for a small, somewhat shady cellphone shop back then. Good times.)
Though if more people order the price comes down as the R&D is amortized.
The price problem comes small batching components and from paying European engineers a living wage vs the phone prototype geeks of Senjen China who are apparently paid in hope and solder vapor.
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