Silent Circle’s Blackphone 2 Landing In September

Silent Circle showed off the second generation of its pro-privacy Android-hardened smartphone, the Blackphone, back in March at the Mobile World Congress tradeshow — touting a summer launch for the device.

In the event, it’s still not launched, and the company has now quietly put up a pre-order pageon its website for a September release — sans price tag.

The Blackphone 2 updates the original handset in the look and feel department, with an all-glass front and rear, plus a larger full HD display. At 5.5 inches across, it’s generous enough although lags behind palm-stretching phablet offerings. Other updates include a 64-bit processor and more RAM.

There’s no further word on the other device Silent Circle has in the works: a tablet, with the unfortunately clumsy moniker: Blackphone+, also announced back in March.

Both devices will run Silent Circle’s SilentOS (formerly called PrivatOS): a security focused flavor of Android, and come pre-loaded with pro-privacy apps such as Silent Circle’s suite of secure messaging apps, as well as bundling access to third party pro-privacy services such as SpiderOak secure cloud storage.

The company has pivoted from its initial prosumer target for Blackphone to concentrate more of its energies on serving the enterprise market — chasing a space that used to be occupied by RIM’s Blackberry, and now selling devices, software and services under its “enterprise privacy platform” banner.

Comments

Here Are The First Connected Home Devices For Apple’s HomeKit

Apple’s HomeKit is finally starting to roll out to actual consumers, via the first crop of HomeKit-enabled accessories from third-party manufacturers. This means you’ll soon be able to get your hands on a range of products for the connected home that work with Siri on your iOS device, and that you’ll be able to do so as soon as today, since some of the new HomeKit accessories start shipping now. The accessories in question range from sensors, to lights, to thermostats, to smart outlets, and come from a group of accessory-makers with a trusted reputation in the connected home industry. HomeKit may have taken a while to arrive, but it’s doing so in grand fashion, with a practical lineup to get your home connected to your iOS ecosystem in an essential way. Elgato Eve The Elgato Eve is a set of connected wireless sensors that monitor key factors like indoor air quality, temperature, humidity as well as conditions outside, like temperature, humidity and air pre...

Google is using machine learning to teach robots how to grasp random objects

Using your hand to grasp a pen that’s lying on your desk doesn’t exactly feel like a chore, but for robots, that’s still a really hard thing to do. So to teach robots how to better grasp random objects, Google’s research team dedicated 14 robots to the task . The standard way to solve this problem would be for the robot to survey the environment, create a plan for how to grasp the object, then execute on it. In the real world, though, lots of things can change between formulating that plan and executing on it. Google is now using these robots to train a deep convolutional neural network (a technique that’s all the rage in machine learning right now) to help its robots predict the outcome of their grasps based on the camera input and motor commands. It’s basically hand-eye coordination for robots. The team says that it took about 3,000 hours of practice (and 800,000 grasp attempts) before it saw “the beginnings of intelligent reacti...

How to Run Older Applications in Windows 10

You cannot expect all the vendors to upgrade their programs to make them compatible with Windows and neither would you want to purchase all the applications every time a new version of Windows is out. Nonetheless, the fact still remains the same that not all applications are compatible with the latest operating systems and there are times when many applications do not initialize when you upgrade your PC to a newer version of Windows. To make things easy for you, Windows 10 allows you to run the programs in compatibility mode. Running a program in compatibility mode makes the application think that it is installed on an older, compatible version of Windows, thus the software runs without any flaws. There are two ways you can run a program in compatibility mode: Program Compatibility Troubleshooter – This is a step-by-step wizard that allows you to pick a program that you prefer to use and configures it to run in compatibility mode. Compatibility Tab – This tab can...

Many Windows 10 Features are Inspired by Linux and Here’s the Proof

Short Bytes: Windows 10 is running on millions of devices and people are praising it for its new features. But, many of the popular features seem inspired by Linux. Take a look and decide on your own. W indows has brought many features like Virtual Desktops, PowerShell, Flat Icons and a lot more in its latest edition Windows 10. Microsoft has worked hard to create its best Windows yet and to do that, it has taken some inspiration from its biggest competition Linux. Want to know which are features that were already present in Linux? Take a look below: Windows 10 Multiple Virtual Desktops | Linux Workspaces With Windows 10, Microsoft has brought the power of multiple virtual desktop s to the Windows users. With this feature, Windows users can now run different applications in multiple desktops. These multiple virtual desktops are called workspaces in Linux. If you remember, KDE 1.0 launched in 1998 was one of the earliest smooth-wo...

eGym raises $45M Series C for cloud-connected gym equipment and fitness software

eGym , the Munich-based startup that offers cloud-connected gym equipment and supporting cloud software and app for the fitness training floor, has closed $45 million in Series C funding. The round was led by new investor HPE Growth Capital, while existing investors, including Highland Europe, also participated. The problem that eGym is looking to solve is that, whilst gyms have moved from a bodybuilder market to a mass market in the last 20 years, the technology in gyms lags behind. That’s despite the fact that better use of technology can help to reduce customer churn, the biggest pain-point of both gym operator and gym users. Comprising of an app for both gym user and trainer, combined with the company’s connected strength machines, the eGym Cloud makes it possible for gym members to receive better fitness instruction and an evolving and personalised fitness plan based on data collected as they workout. And by providing a better workout feedback loop, gym goers can get an i...

Exciting Technology

Search This Blog