If James Bond Had A Smartphone…

At the last Mobile World Congress, Silent Circle released the Blackphone, a smartphone that provides encryption, gives internet access through VPN, and has security as the primary feature.

In 2014, at the last Mobile World Congress, Silent Circle released the Blackphone, a smartphone that provides encryption, gives internet access through VPN, and has security as the primary feature. The Geneva-based company managed to garner a whooping $750 million in contract sales from June 2014 until today.

This MWC, the company released the successor, the aptly named Blackphone 2. With better specs and tighter security, the all new handset is already making quite a splash. Sporting an updated 64 bit octa-core processor, with a much larger 5.5-inch (up from the 4.7-inch) 1080 pixel display covered entirely in Gorilla Glass 3, the newest Blackphone has an incredible 3,060 mAh battery that in addition to lasting forever, is also quick to charge. It also features a microSD card slot, LTE, and 3GB of RAM.

Beside the hardware upgrade, the company also upgraded its software to PrivatOS 1.1, which has a brand new set of apps to help secure the handset. The Android based phone is clearly marketing towards the business sector, which makes sense, given the major hacks recently. Silent Circle developed Silent Suite performs the basic functionality apps, and Silent Meeting, which is the company’s secure conference call app. Additionally, Silent Phone allows the users to make an encrypted phone call over a VoIP service, and Silent Text allows the users to share encrypted files, messages and media. Another brand new feature is Spaces, which allows the user to access completely separate profiles. This can allow the user to have a personal profile that they control, and a work profile that their company can control, including delete.

This MWC, the company released the successor, the aptly named Blackphone 2.

It seems likely that the Blackphone 2 won’t roll out until the end of 2015, but in the mean time, Silent Circle is assuring a top quality phone. CTO Jon Callas has claimed that the company monitors the supply chain to watch the hardware as it is produced, to insure against pre-installed malware.

The phone will start at $649.