The Blackphone 2 could kill off BlackBerry once and for all

“While the rest of the market is going one way, with selfie sticks and curved screens, we’re going down another, to the heart of problems, sticking with privacy and security,” said Silent Circle’s Mike Janke at the launch of the company’s new secure smartphone, the Blackphone 2. And he’s not kidding — though no frills in design, it’s kitted out with some serious security features. First, the hardware. A 5-inch handset with a Full HD screen (protected on the outside by Gorilla Glass 3), it’s running on a 64-bit Qualcomm octa-core processor, backed by 3GB of RAM. A removable 3060mAh battery sits inside (with Quick Charge 2.0 features), with microSDXC support for expandable memory. So far, so standard. It’s on the software side where things get a bit more interesting, and that 3GB of RAM shows its worth. Though Running on Android, the phone is equipped with Silent Circle’s PrivateOS 1.1, an enterprise-orientated, highly secure layer that sits on top of Google’s OS.