Snoop-Resistant Smartphone To Protect Your Privacy

A new 'snoop-resistant' smartphone that can encrypt all calls and messages to protect them from spies and hackers is being developed.

The Blackphone is described by its makers as "the world's first smartphone to put privacy and control ahead of everything else."

The Blackphone is being developed by US-based company Silent Circle and Geeksphone, a Spanish handset maker.

Using cryptography - ways of masking information and communications - the device is able to make and receive secure phone and video calls, as well as exchange encrypted text messages, 'The Times' reported.

 

"The number one priority of creating Blackphone is to uphold the objectives of privacy," said Phil Zimmermann, president of Silent Circle and co-founder of the Blackphone project.

"It's not to serve some other business model of monetising customer data. What we're trying to do is to make a smartphone whose whole purpose is to protect privacy," he said.

However, the phone's makers have not explained key questions raised by experts, such as whether secure calls can only be made between two Blackphones, or exactly how its encryption technology would make it beyond the reach of hackers.

The group will give more details about the handset during Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next month.

Blackphone comes as part of a growing effort among technology companies to protect personal information of mobile phone users.

According to the latest leaks from whistleblower Edward Snowden, the US National Security Agency (NSA) collected almost 200 million mobile phone text messages a day from around the world that allowed it to extract contact networks and credit card data of users.

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Smartphones And Tablets To Challenge PCs In Future

PC sales are expected to face yet another challenging year during 2014 because of pressures from devices such as smartphones and tablets as well as spill-over of economic and political uncertainties of last year, research firm IDC said.

"2014 is expected to remain another challenging year for the PC market, as competition will only grow among the devices," IDC Asia/Pacific Research Manager (Client Devices) Handoko Andi said today. Besides, exchange rate pressures, political risks and economic uncertainties will all likely spill-over into 2014 as well, Andi said in a release.

"That being said, if the big ticket education projects from last year get repeated, or if the Wintel (Windows + Intel) eco-system is able to bring low-price full function PCs to the market, these are all potential upsides that could help drive volumes in the upcoming year," Andi added. Last year, even education projects failed to arrest the decline in PC shipments.

According to IDC, PC sales fell by 10 per cent to 108 million units in 2013 in Asia Pacific (excluding Japan), its second consecutive yearly decline, due to smartphones and tablets cannibalising PC shipments on the consumer side. "The economic sluggishness in big emerging markets in the region adversely affected buying sentiments, with the education sector projects being a lone bright spot in the commercial space, without which the region could have dropped even further," IDC said.

On the consumer side, smartphone and tablet distractions spread throughout the region this year, further contributing to the sharp decline in the PC market, it added. "The year ended on a somber note for the PC market, as it declined for the second consecutive year. Distraction from competing devices, ongoing pessimism in the economy and exchange rate pressures were among the factors impacting the market this year," Andi said. In Q4 of 2013 specifically, the market came in 2 per cent below IDC's initial forecasts with a 9 per cent year-on-year decline, IDC said.

"While, most of the region was generally in line with forecasts, Thailand stood out as an exception, as the market there was plagued by the ongoing political turmoil. Shipment volumes this quarter will likely be the lowest in Thailand in the last four years," it added. In 2013, Lenovo retained its top spot, although it could not shrug off the slump in its home market China, posting an annual decline in 2013 as a result, IDC said.

HP's year-on-year growth in 2013 was almost entirely due to fulfilments for a big education project in India. Weakness in China arrested an otherwise good year for Dell in the region, despite the internal distractions affecting the vendor, it added. ASUS too fell in line with the overall market trend, declining year-on-year, while Acer continued to struggle with its product strategy, declining in nearly all markets in the region this year, IDC said.

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Smartphones With 2 GB RAM And Quad-Core Processor Under 25K

Smartphones are growing powerful with each passing day. The measure of RAM and processor the handset comes with fathoms its computing power. Though the next revolution of octa-core processors and higher RAM is around the corner, the Smartphones with quad-core processor and 2 GB RAM is what on the user’s mind while considering the powerful handset. Here is the list of 10 such Smartphones, read to know more.

Huawei Ascend P6 Price About 25,000

This dual SIM phone has an LCD capacitive touch screen of 4.7 inch at 1280X720 pixel resolution with gorilla glass protection. The device runs on Android 4.2 Jelly bean and is powered by a Quad-core processor clocked at 1.5GHz. Huawei Ascend P6 houses an 8 MP rear snapper and a 5 MP front unit. The connectivity features like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB, EDGE and GPS are supported by the device. The 2000mAh battery pack can provide power for 28hours of talktime on 2G network. 

UMI X2 Price: App. 14,000

The Chinese handset vendor UMI’s X2 has a 1.2 GHz MTK MT6589 quad-core processor with PowerVR SGX544 GPU, and without surprise, the 2 GB RAM itself will convince you about the multi-tasking capabilities. It has a 5 inch IPS Retina Screen with HD resolution of 1920x1080 pixels with 441 PPI. The display comes with Gorilla Glass 2 coating that protects the screen from scratches.

The autofocus 13 MP rear camera with flash and a surprisingly good 3 MP front camera is more than enough to satisfy you optical needs. The phone mounted on Android 4.2 Jellybean is dual SIM and has a 2500mAh battery pack for a really long uninterrupted power supply.

Huawei Ascend Mate Price About 24,999

Ascend Mate has an impressive display of 6.1 inch Anti-scratch, Toshiba IPS+ Screen at 1280x720 Pixels resolution and also has Corning Gorilla Glass protection. It comes with company’s propriety user interface Emotion UI 2.0 and runs on Android 4.1 jelly bean mobile platform.  It is powered by 1.6GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor coupled 2 GB RAM and a Vivante GC4000 GPU.  The device packs 8GB of internal storage expandable up to 64 GB.  On the optics side it has 8MP rear and 1MP front cameras. The device packs a mammoth 4050 mAh Non-removable Li-Ion battery which offers a record 1100 hours of 2G and up to 1072 hours of 3G talktime. The recently launched Ascend Mate 2  can apparently charge other phones as well.

Intex Aqua i7 Price About 17,783

Intex Aqua i7 comes with a 5-inch Full HD display with Corning Gorilla Glass, a quad-core MediaTek processor clocked at 1.5GHz with 2GB RAM and a 2000mAH battery that offers talk-time of 7 hours and standby time of 220 hours. The phone is equipped with a 13MP rear camera and 5MP front-camera and runs on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean OS.

Other specifications include massive 32 GB inbuilt memory and instead of a microSD card slot for additional space, the phone provides an alternative 5GB free storage space on Intex cloud. It’s well connected with Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, 3G and GPS. The device also includes a g-sensor, proximity sensor and light sensor which assist the phone to auto pause the video when the user looks away from the screen.

The phone is pre-loaded with 15 useful apps like Hungama, Matrabasha and more where the Matrabasha application has 22 Indian languages and lets the users to text, tweet and update status in their mother tongue.

Sony Xperia ZR 24,475

Sony Xperia ZR comes with 4.6-inch super-sharp HD Reality Display powered by Mobile BRAVIA Engine 2 and has a resolution of 1280x720 pixels. The Smartphone runs on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean operating system.

Powered by 1.5 GHz quad-core Qualcomm S4 Pro chipset and Adreno 320 GPU, the device is supported by 2GB RAM. Camera wise, it is equipped with 13MP Exmor RS camera with LED flash and a VGA front facing camera for video calling. It has an internal storage of 8GB and a microSD card slot supporting up to 32GB for additional storage.

In terms of connectivity, it includes features like 4G, Wi-Fi, GPS, 3G HSPA+, Bluetooth 4.0, DLNA GPS and NFC. It is packed with 2300mAh battery and loaded with Sony media apps including Walkman, PlayStation Mobile and more.

Micromax Canvas Turbo A250 Price About 19,299

Micromax is known for bringing high-end featured devices at an affordable pricing. This is the main reason behind Micromax’s popularity. Micromax’s Canvas Turbo A250 that comes with 4.2.1 Jelly Bean OS out of box and sports an impressive 5 inch 1080p Full HD IPS-LCD display with a pixel density of 441. Other hardware specifications of this device include a 1.5 GHz quad core Cortex-A7 processor, which is coupled with PowerVR SGX554 GPU and 2 GB of RAM. The device comes with 16 GB of inbuilt storage but unfortunately it does not support further expansion of the storage. The optics of the Turbo A250 includes a 13 MP rear camera and a 5 MP front facing camera. The Canvas Turbo A250 has a non-removable 2000 mAh Li-ion battery which delivers up to 9 hours of talk time.

Lenovo Vibe X  Priced About 24,899

The new Smartphone from Lenovo comes embedded with a 5-inch full HD display at 1080 x 1920 pixels resolution which comes with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection. It has a svelte design with super thin 6.9 mm frame of polycarbonate material with laser-engraved 3D tactile finish. The device is powered by quad-core 1.5 GHz MediaTek (MTK 6589T) processor which is complimented with 2 GB of RAM. Lenovo Vibe X runs on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean OS out of box and comes with 16 GB of internal storage.

The optics of the phone includes a 5 MP front and the LED flash accompanied 13 MP rear facing cameras that cater to a wonderful photo experience.

The Vibe X features unique apps like SHAREit, with which phone-to-phone data transfer can be in a fastest possible way. At about 4 Mbps, users can exchange pictures, large videos, and complete folders and even share apps without using any data cable or Wi-Fi hub.

Google Nexus 4 Price About  23,599

Google Nexus 4, manufactured by LG is most popular among power hungry consumers with its elegant design and good specs. Running on Google’s Android 4.2, Jelly Bean operating system upgradable to latest Android Kit Kat; Google Nexus 4 is smooth in performance and is powered with 1.5GHz quad-core CPU ensuring a hitch free experience along with 2GB RAM. It comes with a 4.7-inch screen size with a resolution of 1280x768 pixels and a pixel density of 320ppi which makes the text and graphics look sharp.

The phone comes in 8, 16 and 32 GB variants, and the 16GB at 23,599 is what most preferred by Indian users. Even though microSD card is absent, 13GB user available memory would be sufficient enough for most purposes. In terms of connectivity, it allows users to wireless transfer details and data between compatible handsets. Other connectivity features include NFC, micro USB, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.

Gionee Elife E6 Price About 20,999

Gionee Elife E6 shames its counterparts in design. The beautifully designed gadget has a 5 inch IPS screen with 1920 X 1080 pixel resolution. The device runs on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, with a layer of customization named ‘Amigo’ on top. The gadget is powered by 1.5GHz quad core processor coupled with 2GB RAM and 32GB of internal memory. The 13MP primary camera assists in clicking images and the 5MP front unit helps in video calling. Gionee Elife supports most of the connectivity features including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB and GPS. The 2000mAh battery is good enough to get the gadget going for one full day.

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