Tag Archives: Boeing Black

Self-Destructing Phone Will Keep Your Darkest Secrets

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boeing-black-smartphone

Smartphones are pretty incredible, but over-reliance on them might turn into more than inconvenience if you happen to loose them. This phone provides quite a solution to such predicament.

boeing-black-smartphone

This model in question is called Boeing Black, and it is a smartphone designed by Boeing themselves for government use: 100% designed to keep private stuff private. If someone who is not the owner tampers with it, the Boeing Black proceeds to delete all its data and brick itself. We were really expecting it to blow up, but no such luck.

Onto the technical side of things? The phone runs on the latest Android os, with a 5.2-by-2.7-inch screen (that’s larger than an iPhone, mind you), and uses dual SIM cards to operate several lines.

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Google Will Give Developers a Lesson in Modular Smartphones in April

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Google Modular Smartphone, Project Ara

The alpha version of the Project Ara MDK (module developers’ kit) will be unveiled by Google on April 15-16, at the first Ara Developers’ Conference.

Motorola ATAP (Advanced Technology and Projects), the home of Projects Ara and Tango, is one of the things Google kept after selling Motorola Mobility to Lenovo, the others being about 17,000 patents. The concept behind Ara was first presented by Motorola last year in October, and the project is said to also be based on several patents that Google bought from Modu prior to acquiring Motorola Mobility.

What seems to be the ultimate modular smartphone could turn into a nightmare for other smartphone manufacturers. Google wants to enable people to change the underperforming modules when new ones hit the market, rather than changing the entire smartphone, something that doesn’t seem to bother iPhone users, despite the exorbitant prices practiced by Apple.

Google plans to organize a series of three Ara Developers’ Conferences this year, the first one being scheduled for April 15-16. This is a sign that the search giant might not launch the modular smartphone before 2015, but even if it is so, the wait will be worth it. Let’s face it, Motorola under Google ownership did not really launch anything otherworldly, but Ara has great chances of being something revolutionary. It might be for the best that Google wants to launch smartphones under its own name, considering the weight of this brand.

One other thing that will set Ara apart from all the other smartphones, be them modular or not, is the price. According to the latest reports, the barebone smartphone will cost $50, while the price of the modules will depend on the capabilities of each one of them. Do you want a great camera, but don’t care that much about gaming and the smartphone’s GPU? Do you need a lot of RAM because you run a lot of apps at the same time? There are plenty of other scenarios in which Project Ara looks like the perfect solution.

Rest assured, Google’s Project Ara is not the only modular smartphone out there. Competition includes Boeing Black, Phonebloks and ZTE Eco-Mobius. I’m glad that this is becoming a trend, as it’s much better to replace a single module than the entire smartphone when new features appear.

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Boeing Black: The Self-Destructing Smartphone James Bond Would Use

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Boeing Black

FCC documents filled by the Chicago-based aircraft manufacturer suggest that Boeing locked its target on the smartphone market, more specifically on the paranoia-ridden privacy-focused niche of that market.

As one of the two main commercial aircraft makers (the other one being Airbus), Boeing must know one thing or two about hardware, engineering and security, right? The company wants to put all that to a test in a privacy focused smartphone called Boeing Black. This color (or rather non-color, but that’s debatable), while not new to smartphone manufacturers, seems to gain a new meaning. In other words, black smartphones are the equivalent of ninja fighters in terms of stealth presence, if you will. What made me say that? The newly launched PrivatOS Blackphone, of course! Boeing’s Black smartphone will also run Android, but it is currently unknown how much the OS will be customized by the manufacturer.

Besides being secure, Boeing Black is also modular, sign that the manufacturer didn’t take only privacy in consideration, but also the productivity of whoever is going to use this device. Until we get to see Google’s Project Ara (a modular phone supposed to cost $50) hit the market, any chance to change the looks and functionality of a smartphone by adding or removing modules should be appreciated.

The FCC documents include a description of how Boeing Black destructs itself: “The Boeing Black phone is manufactured as a sealed device both with epoxy around the casing and with screws, the heads of which are covered with tamper proof covering to identify attempted disassembly. Any attempt to break open the casing of the device would trigger functions that would delete the data and software contained within the device and make the device inoperable.”

In other words, this phone discourages disassembly and triggers data deletion not only when sensing unauthorized access within the software, but also when someone attempts to alter the hardware. In my opinion, this is a much better solution than a software smartphone kill switch, despite being similar in concept.

Since NSA is not the only governmental agency that listens in to the citizens, and USA is not the only country where such things happen, it’s great to see that more and more companies are concerned about the security and privacy of people.

Check the video located here to see some of the best selling points of the Boeing Black smartphone. The availability and price of this device are yet to be announced, but the initiative is definitely worth some applause.

Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories about the smartphone kill switch that could become mandatory if the US Senate passes the law, and the PrivatOS Blackphone, another smartphone focusing on privacy.