Silent Circle reveals secure Blackphone 2 phone, Blackphone+ tablet
Mobile World Steve Dent / Engadget : Blackphone launches a new phone, tablet and privacy platform Gerald Lynch / Gizmodo : Blackphone 2 Is Probably the World's Most Secure Smartphone Russell Brandom / The Verge : Blackphone unveils a new phone and tablet running secure, encrypted Android Bertel King, Jr / Android Police : Silent Circle Buys Out Geeksphone To Get Full Control Of Blackphone, Plans To Unveil More Devices And Services At MWC Gary Sims / Android Authority : Silent Circle gets talkative about the Blackphone 2 and the cryptically named Blackphone+ tablet Electronista : Silent Circle intros secure Blackphone 2, Blackphone Plus tablet Martyn Williams / PC World : Silent Circle's privacy-focused Blackphone 2, Blackphone+ tablet target businesses Carly Page / Inquirer : MWC: Silent Circle unveils Blackphone+ tablet and next privacy-focused smartphone Patrick Scott / New York Times : Blackphone Announces New Privacy-Oriented Phone and Tablet Stuart Dredge / Guardian : Silent Circle unveils Blackphone 2 smartphone and Blackphone+ tablet Steve Ranger / ZDNet : ilent Circle unveils BlackPhone 2, plans BlackPhone + secure tablet, aims at business David Meyer / Gigaom : Silent Circle shows off more powerful Blackphone 2 privacy phone
Context & Ripple Effects
This MWC reveal lands three days after Silent Circle raised $50M and bought out Geeksphone's stake in their joint venture, taking full control of the Blackphone line — so the new phone and tablet are the first products shipped entirely on its own authority. It follows an awkward start to 2015: weeks earlier the company had to patch a flaw that let attackers remotely decrypt texts on the original Blackphone.
The subsequent record frames how this launch played out: preorders opened that August, co-founder Jon Callas left for Apple by mid-2016, and court documents in the Geeksphone dispute revealed a 15% layoff and an uncertain future — though investors still put in a $50M Series C weeks later.
First-order effects
- With the Geeksphone buyout complete, every Blackphone product decision — pricing, roadmap, security response — now sits solely with Silent Circle, and customers get a two-device privacy ecosystem instead of a single handset.
- The original phone's decryption bug makes the Blackphone 2's security claims the immediate test: any repeat would land directly on Silent Circle alone, with no JV partner to share blame.
Second-order effects
- Sole ownership converts a hardware partnership into a solo cost burden — device manufacturing, updates, and support scale across two product lines at once, which is exactly where the later 15% layoffs and the Geeksphone litigation show the strain.
- A dedicated encrypted-Android tablet pushes Silent Circle beyond niche secure calling into general-purpose privacy computing, putting it in competition with mainstream Android vendors' own security hardening rather than just niche rivals.
Third-order effects
- Callas's re-hire by Apple points at the structural problem: the expertise behind standalone secure handsets is being absorbed by platform incumbents who can ship privacy features at OS level without needing a separate device business.
- If the pattern holds, privacy-first hardware survives only as a funded niche — sustained by repeated venture rounds like the $50M Series C rather than by handset economics — until platform vendors absorb its selling points.
The trend: Standalone secure-device makers are being squeezed between venture-sustained niches and platform incumbents absorbing privacy as an OS feature, a shift visible in Blackphone's buyout, layoffs, and talent flight to Apple.