BlackPhone, BP1, PrivatOS, Do you own one? Do you use it? How do you use it?

[Tilted]

BP1 lacks adequate documentation

Although the BP1 does slow down occassionally (i dunno why yet--in some Spaces i currently hav live backgrounds and lotsa apps), and less often this results in an uninvited reboot (maybe once a week with daily heavy use), the main weakness of this device, the reason for the considerable amount of bad press (some of which is surely legitimate, ie genuine, honest) is the glaring lack of documentation. No decent user guide (i finally did hav a look at it), no wiki, no user forum, the FAQs on the Blackphone website often hav no answers ("No English Translation"), just good customer service, security via obscurity (not good).

Admittedly, this phone is ahead of its time, and when ur pushing the limits of technology with very limited resources, documentation is not a priority. But in this case, the result may hav been compromised security. I dont own a BP2, but it's designed to support Google Services, and maybe those services are adequately compartmentalized into a separate space and dont leak data between spaces (like the BP1 intentionally leaks contact info from its Silent Space as i described in a previous post here recently). I hope the BP2 receives the documentation that BP1 lacks or else i suspect that further security compromises will appear in BP3 (i havnt heard anything about any BP3).

Jus sayin, u make something new, it works great, but its a flop because u don't explain how to use it. Use ur words, geeks. And then maybe there would be more happy BP1 users here discussing ur words rather than discussing whether or not the device is of any value.

(i mean, fellow geeks)

[Tilted]

End of lifecycle support

from support@silentcircle.com
to me via unsecured email
MAR 31, 2016 * 02:03PM UTC

"With the recent upgrade of our product to the Blackphone 2, we will no longer be supporting the Blackphone 1. This includes no updates to the Private OS platform. Silent Circle will continue to update any security patches and update Silent Phone."

Regards,
Customer Support

[Tilted]

It felt like the carrier reacted to something from my device, and then quarantined my traffic, but a restart of the device restored access. This only happened in England...

...What have you found that triggers the lost signal on your BP1? Did it happen less frequently after upgrading to one of the newer PrivatOS 1.1.x release?

Really i only just started using the BP1 regularly, so i havnt noticed any differences with OS updates.

Could it be the "Hide Device Info" feature that eventually triggers signal loss? I would imagine that both carriers and governments hav limited tolerance for that feature.

Update: See my subsequent post about this. My APN settings weren't correct when i wrote the above, and after selecting the correct APN settings, my 4G signal seems to be stable.

[TheCotMan]

@Cot, i was thinking that maybe the 4G signal loss is due to a mobile snoop ramping up a competing signal that is specific to my current wireless connection vs the connection of other wireless devices nearby that on the same wireless network carrier. The snoop's intention is to eventually disconnect me from my wireless network carrier, or to get me to disconnect before that by me toggling my Airplane mode. Then when i reconnect, i reconnect to the snoop's stronger signal. Eventually the snoop moves on to bigger game elsewhere, leaving me once again with no mobile data until i toggle Airplane mode. That might explain ur experience also, no?

Though it could explain my experience, it is not likely. 4G/4GLTE has been claimed as more difficult for this ( http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl...ordable-gadget ) but not impossible. Also, for that to work with my experience, it would have to be a targeted attack, and involve following me around for weeks at a time. The problem for me would happen in many places. I'm not of any value for any government to target, and I doubt any group with organized crime, or "curious technophile" would dedicate such time with just one person like me and follow them. (For me, it is far too unlikely. Maybe you are of greater interest to one of these parties to follow, or maybe you fit a profile that is of greater interest than me.)

Outside of targeted attack could be the possibility of wide-spread access to stingray-like devices, being used by many, many competing entities, but the cost and required technical proficiency for use makes that even more unlikely than a targeted attack.

The only group that might have an interest in getting information about me would be google or amazon, in order to try to better advertise things for me to buy. :-)

[Tilted]

@Cot, i was thinking that maybe the 4G signal loss is due to a mobile snoop ramping up a competing signal that is specific to my current wireless connection vs the connection of other wireless devices nearby that on the same wireless network carrier. The snoop's intention is to eventually disconnect me from my wireless network carrier, or to get me to disconnect before that by me toggling my Airplane mode. Then when i reconnect, i reconnect to the snoop's stronger signal. Eventually the snoop moves on to bigger game elsewhere, leaving me once again with no mobile data until i toggle Airplane mode. That might explain ur experience also, no?

Update: When i wrote the above, my APN settings were for a previous carrier (ie, my APN settings were wrong).

[Tilted]

StrikerOne mentions the fact that the 3 spaces of the BP1 are not entirely separate or equal. While i was in my #3 space, i got a POTS (Plain Old Telephobe System) call from a contact whose name and picture were only recorded in the contacts of my #1 space, and whose phone number wasn't listed publicaly. Yet i saw their name and picture pop up im space #3. I filed a bug report but Silent Circle says that is how the BP1 is designed. It is assumed ur main contact list is in the default #1 space (ie, Silent Space unless u renamed the space). Then regardless of which space ur in, u'll be informed about who is calling u. Incoming calls arrive at any/every space. Outgoing calls can always be made from Silent space, but u can restrict outgoing calls from other spaces.

Incoming text messages arrive only at Silent space. Outgoing texs are allowed from any space. It's three phones in one, but for one person. Once u understand the design philosophy, the call and texting rules are easy to remember. Is all this in the owners manual? Ah! U didn't kno there's an owners manual? I dunno if this stuff is in there or not.

I got the data-only plan i mentioned previously that includes unlimited messaging (SMS and MMS) and is so cheap that i can afford Silent World minutes. Since all my phone calls are VOIP, um...i forgot what i was thinking about. Anyway, i like the BP1, very much. I'm a late bloomer--i only activated the phone in January of 2016 after Silent Circle told me to use or loose the included Silent Circle subscriptions.

I guess this is the unofficial Blackphone forum, unless anybody knows a better place.

The Viper VPN app seems (from reviews) fast, secure, affordable, and reliable which is what i want when coupled with Tor (Orbot) and a sometimes unreliable mobile data connection. In contrast, Disconnect Wireless VPN is slow and too NATO (only a handful of countries to choose from, most all USA allies thus susceptible to NSA intrusion).

I havent tried Spider Oak online storage--i altrady use Mega.

Switching Spaces is smooth and easy via a long press of the hardwired menu key anytime.

Nice feature in Silent Space restricts background data in all spaces simultaneously. Only shows associated icon in staus bar of Silent Space tho.

Bugs at this stage (PrivatOS v1.1.15) are mostly like that (ie, minnor). Very occasionally the home screen merges with a view from Secure Spaces (a display glitch) which even more rarely requires a reboot to fix. I prefer a phone with detachable mic and camera, opensource modem and opensource SD Card firmware. But we've come a long way, baby. The Blackphone 1 is stable. Everything works like its supposed to. An amazing accomplishment given the odds. Take that, Big Oil.

[TheCotMan]

I hav often noticed my BP1 4G signal drop out when it seems fine on another mobile device nearby whose wireless network carrier is also hosted by T-mobile. Fortunately, the default BP1 launcher makes it easy to toggle Airplane mode in any Space, which nearly always regains the mobile data signal quickly. Has anyone gotten feedback from Silent Circle about this problem? I mean, is it spooks doing the evil twin or is it a hardware or software problem?

I saw this with earlier OS/firmware releases of the BP1. It slowly started working more reliably around the time they release PrivatOS 1.1.12? Now, it seems to happen when I go to locations with no signal at all, and stay there for a while. After I leave those remote locations, and return to places with full service, the phone never re-acquires service unless I cycle through airplane mode and back to turning off airplane mode.

I've also seen this on my BP1 internationally. The number of data frequency/bands supported by the BP1 was not as wide as some of my other devices. If your device does not support the same frequencies for 3G/4G service as your other devices, then they can show strong signal while your BP1 shows nothing. What makes things worse, is each country has their own frequencies allocated for 3G/4G service, and some get re-purposed. I have an older international, quad-band (plus) data-service wifi hotspot with 3G/4G/4GLTE support that has many more bands than an older wifi quad-band (plus) data-service hotspot with 3G/4G support, but the older quad-band (data) hotspot has support for 4G frequency bands available in many Asian, and South Pacific countries, but no longer available as frequencies/band in any other US hotspot or phone available for purchase in the US. It is like the band was available and used internationally, then in a short period of time, removed as a band for international devices sold in the US.

I had a similar problem to what you describe while in England. Signal would drop to carrier/provider, but toggling airplane mode re-established it. I also had a similar problem with a WiFi hotspot, but that was slightly different -- it would show good signal with data provider, but basic network tests (mtr outside of VPN tunnel) failed to show any hops working beyond the first with the data carrier. Rebooting the hotspot "fixed" this. All traffic through the hotspot was encrypted (each device associating with the hotspot enabled a VPN tunnel which forced all IPv4/IPv6 traffic through the tunnel, including DNS.) It felt like the carrier reacted to something from my device, and then quarantined my traffic, but a restart of the device restored access. This only happened in England, not in Germany, Sweden, or the Czech Republic or other European countries. It is more likely the UK carrier was having problems in England. Any thought it could be government interference would be silly -- what government would be so silly as to take reactive actions that would expose their detection? Best bet is incompetence on side of carrier, or bug between my device and their network.

What have you found that triggers the lost signal on your BP1? Did it happen less frequently after upgrading to one of the newer PrivatOS 1.1.x release?

[Tilted]

I use mostly F-droid and APK Pure apps to download/install/update my other apps for BP1. Hav no idea how or where APK Pure originated--they hav only free-as-in-beer apps, seems like a mirror copy of Google Play Store. No ads at APK Pure, but of course many of their apps hav ads and track u, just like apps at Google Play. No Pro versions of apps at APK Pure. APK Pure lists the number of times each app has been downloaded from APK Pure, along with the current app rating and description both from Google Play Store. APK Pure notifies u of updates to installed apps, but cant update apps installed by Fdroid and vice versa, so currently i hav to keep track of which apps came from which store (bummer). APK Pure downloads the APKs to ur internal storage where u can delete or copy them.

Fdroid doesnt let u see the APK so easily. Fdroid can force apps to download thru Tor (Orbot). Fdroid provides no rating but might comment about permissions and tries only to offer versions of apps that are opensource (some of those apps may hav ads or track u--Fdroid might mention the ads but not the tracking).

Something like that.

Google voice recognition (ie, "Voice Typing" input method) works great simply by installing com.google.android.GoogleQuickSearch v4.0.28-1516623 arm (Google App).apk

The Assistant app by api.ai then works, recognizing ur voice (in English at least). Google Earth works. Gapps Browser enables Google Maps and many other Google apps without having a Google account. I dont hav Google Play Store app or Google Services on my BP1, so no Signal Private Messenger.

Open Source Maps (OSM)
work. Major web browsers and file managers work. I use Nextapp Keyboard, FX File Explorer, and Atlas web browser all by Nextapp. Opera, Firefox/Orfox web browsers work. Microsoft free office apps work and dont seem to require network access if u save ur docs locally. Vuze works as a torrent downloader.

In the USA, T-mobile has cheap data-only plans (like $35 for 6GB fast-then-slow-or-rollover mobile data). Those plans were maybe designed for tablets but work fine on the BP1 (i think). I hav often noticed my BP1 4G signal drop out when it seems fine on another mobile device nearby whose wireless network carrier is also hosted by T-mobile. Fortunately, the default BP1 launcher makes it easy to toggle Airplane mode in any Space, which nearly always regains the mobile data signal quickly. Has anyone gotten feedback from Silent Circle about this problem? I mean, is it spooks doing the evil twin or is it a hardware or software problem?

Update:
When i wrote the above, my APN settings were wrong (i had changed carriers a week previously but had not also changed the APN settings. My bad. Been on CDMA too long). My 4G signal seems stable now.

[mrfish]

Awesome - After contributing here I got a bit nostalgic and pulled out the old BP1 from my drawer to see if there had been a newer software update since I last threw it in the drawer - and there was... So I ran the update to latest version for BP1 and it is boot looping now - it's doing something funky, it occasionally plls out of the loop and begins the boot process, got it as far as entering the key/pass for disk decryption and looked away for a moment and when I looked back, it had returned back to looping...

Honestly... I applaud, appreciate and respect the effort and the 'have a go' attitude of silent* - but seriously... this phone... what a fucking piece of shit.

I bought a BP1 a few weeks ago and I completely agree with everything you have written. As a piece of hardware it is completely fucking useless. The signal is hopeless compared to my 1st generation Moto G 4G and as you have pointed out Redphone is absent. Luckily I only parted with £48.02 for it.

[StrikerOne]

Awesome - After contributing here I got a bit nostalgic and pulled out the old BP1 from my drawer to see if there had been a newer software update since I last threw it in the drawer - and there was... So I ran the update to latest version for BP1 and it is boot looping now - it's doing something funky, it occasionally plls out of the loop and begins the boot process, got it as far as entering the key/pass for disk decryption and looked away for a moment and when I looked back, it had returned back to looping...

Honestly... I applaud, appreciate and respect the effort and the 'have a go' attitude of silent* - but seriously... this phone... what a fucking piece of shit.

[StrikerOne]

SilentOS V1.1.5

By the time I resurrected my "mothballed" BlackPhone BP1 back into service as a desperate temporary fill in, after communications went down when the string snapped between my two plastic cups - SilentOS v1.2 had been released and I was pleasantly surprised to see that the guys at Silent* were still not only operational, but were still working on updates to the OS - Which made me sing an impromptu couple of lines from Alanis Morisettet's 'Ironic' to myself as I begun exploring the new features like spaces etc.

The software updates and improved features were (are) great - separately secure partitioned spaces that were instantly swappable is something I know many people in the build community had been trying to achieve (in a stable release ROM) for a while before this and god knows many users were just as eager to see it happen - so to have Silent* release it as part of their ROM in a version they were confident in putting their reputation on, knowing full well that it would not only have to hold up on the face of it, but hold up to the inevitable onslaught of security nutters who were going to try and hack the shit out of it.

The only problem (and big one at that) with this whole spaces thing was, whilst you could effectively set up three seperate "phones" on each space, no communications apps (not even 'other' apps, like SMSSecure etc) would work from the secondary spaces... for example, if you disabled the ASOP messaging application on primary, having installed your chosen messaging app on thee secondary space and set it as the default messaging app, the result of this would be complete disable of messaging capability (in or out) - The messages wouldn't have a messaging app to appear on with the default app disabled on primary partition and the secondary partition wasn't allowed to receive any communications (inc. SMS), so the user preffered and installed messaging app on this secondary space would not function either...

So, as long as all you wanted to do was play angry birds or just get back to some good old fashioned handing out of your personal information to Google by downloading their super secure, 'privacy is our priority', "Do you accept we own your soul? Yes or Fuck Off" suite of evilness, then the spaces would work fine for you - but if you actually wanted to use an effectively platform of communications that was at least semi secure outside of the silent phone/text suite, then just like google said, you can fuck right off! ;)

So this left you with three options:

1. tell your friends they should all download silent suite text and phone apps and then convince them all that its not that your paranoid, everyone should be concerned about security/privacy yada yada (we've all had that discussion I'm sure!) and then once you manage to talk your way out of being committed to a place with padded walls, tin foil hats a plenty and other crazy paranoid people like yourself, you're about to lose them all over again when you tell them they need to pay a subscription fee to be able to communicate with you using these apps - if they didn't think you were insane before that, they sure as fcuk will now.

So, rather than become a social hermit and lose all your friends entirely, you give in to the system and you throw your hands in the air like a French Army Officer in battle, announcing your surrender to all further attempts of personal privacy and secure communications, kiss Google and a whole bunch of other eves droppers on the feet as you bow to their vastly superior system of keeping you in their grasp and learn to love that ASOP messaging app in all its plain text glory and its lack of compartmentalized secure storage of your messages on the phone.

2. You get another second phone, one for when your friends decide the only way they can stage an intervention for you is by contacting you after downloading silent phone/text themselves, because you've dug your stubborn heels in and you refuse to break your own drills on remaining securecomms at ALL times and one for maintaining some kind of social function within the community by using off the shelf apps like Signal/Textsecure/SMSSecure etc too do what Silent Circle should have done - provide a messaging/phone app that will enable you to communicate securely over voip/data when you're talking to another paranoid friend, but will also allow you to send plain text SMS/Calls to your less highly strung acquaintances seamlessly - within the same app... TextSecure did it, and whilst the WhisperSystems team ultimately lacked the infrustructure required to maintain reliable support of this (cost inhibitive I no doubt), it would appear that SilenCIrcle already have the infrustructure in place to support this, as a requirement of the Silent Text/Phone platforms - the same infrustructure that enables this would also be capable of supporting plain text SMS to any phone and messaging platform in the world - and THAT would be something worth paying $9.95 a month for!

3. Accept that its over, that its time to let go of the BlackPhone dream, take it off that oh so hopeful pedistal you envisioned it might one day sit on and BURN IT WITH FIRE!

[StrikerOne]

I have a "Blackphone 1" which I pre-ordered on day one of pre-sales and eagerly awaited the arrival of the future delivery date. By a twist of logistics and development delays with the software that was designed for the US/EU phones, I became one of the first "paying customers" in the world to get my hands on a blackphone - and it had barely been powered on 5 minutes before curiosity got the better of me and I began pulling it apart at every possible level and trying to work out everything about it.

To be frank - the first release blackphone 1 (as a complete package, software and hardware) was a complete disappointment to put it nicely. My biggest gripe is the physical platform that the handset is packaged in. I might be wrong, but I am pretty sure that the external casing is an off the shelf generic phone design which was selected for the fact that they were either already sitting in a warehouse in china ready to go as a cheap and available fast track solution for anyone who willing to roll with a phone that had specifications on par with a Nokia 510.

It seemed as if they had been in such a desperate hurry to get the phones out on sale and in the market that they completely compromised on the physical phone/handset quality - to such a level in fact, that I had serious concerns as to whether there would be enough future interest in it to keep the rather admirable blackphone concept alive and in business long enough to see a second more respectable 2.0 version released.

The second gripe is the OS... I'm referring to the original release version v1.0 for the following: Their custom designed secure android operating system model that they call "PrivateOS" sucked teh wang badly and whilst I'm not disputing that the overall security of the operating system met up to their claims in its "Straight out of the box as supplied with no other apps installed" version, it was about as effectively useful as tits on a bull as far as its design purpose as a "Smartphone" went.

Basically, you could send sms/mms via standard android messenger, make/receive calls via the standard phone dialer and add up how many times you wanted to throw it to the ground and burn it with fire on the standard android calculator every time the touch screen calibration went totally bezerk, which meant that the only way to unlock the phone's pin code was to turn it off and try to remain positive while it slowly rebooted while your by now very cynical mates laughed their ass off at you for purchasing a phone that was pretty much selling itself as a fair piece of shit that had demonstrated very few redeeming features so far.

Basically there was a pretty straight forward choice to make - leave the phone completely factory standard with no third party applications or software loaded, or risk potentially compromising its security entirely with the venerability of the decrypted and unlocked OS creating a considerably serious area of risk - especially if the owner wasn't quite the switched on privacy/security/paranoid type who maintained good OPCON as well. Oh and did I mention, it was as buggy as a locust plague.

It lacked the serious in depth privacy settings controls that allow a user to really get into the nitty gritty of what the applications are permitted to do and not do. When an off the shelf custom ROM like Cynagenmod provides more user defined privacy control than the "state of the art" blackphone that was getting hailed as to security like it was the second coming of Jesus, then you can't be blamed for feeling a little disappointed, if not just plain confused.

This post is epic. I might continue with my thoughts on the updated OS which is now the current version - PrivateOS 1.2 - A huge improvement, still not good enough to make me switch back to it from my own custom build platform which runs on the platform of a much more capable and spec'd phone (Samsung GS5) - which unlike the blackphone, can do things like snap photo's which don't look like I used a solar powered calculator to take them.

[umass]

I have both BlackPhone1 and BlackPhone2. I too have few contacts that use the SilentCircle apps with account, but several that use (at the time RedPhone and TextSecure (now "Signal".)

There was no simple path to get RedPhone installed. Manual generation, extraction and import of a RedPhone APK was useless for BlackPhone1, since RedPhone (and other apps) rely on the google GPN and other services from google to work.

Spaces support for BlackPhone1 helped, and support for Amazon Android network and others provided some help for some apps, but services like RedPhone/TextSecure still did not work without GPN and other google services.

BlackPhone2 supports spaces (like BP1does) but also allows support for Google Play and apps in spaces. This allows install of RedPhone, TextSecure and other Google Play based apps, and have them work, but when installed in alternate spaces (not the core space) there is no access to local contacts to see who is calling. (There is access to any contacts you push to the google network account that the space is using, but not for those contacts you don't include. So, give up personal info to google, or get no local resolution of claling numbers to names with local address books.)

From your description, it sounds like you are talking about the media/drive that contains the core OS, not the SanDisk. If you are talking SanDisk, for the BlackPhone 1, you pop the back cover, remove the battery, and can slide out the SanDisk to replace it. On BlackPhone2, a small paperclip can be unwound and poked into the small hole on the side to eject a little caddy that the SanDisk can rest.

I have no suggestions for replacing the phone's built-in drive. Have you considered contacting https://twitter.com/SilentCircle silentcircle on twitter and asking them to look at your other thread: https://forum.defcon.org/forum/gener...-drive-upgrade ? Maybe they will respond. Best bet, they will ask you to email their support and copy/paste your request, then privately tell you there is no customer upgrade or replacement for the built-in media/drive. They will probably ask you to snail-mail it to some sort of warranty replacement address so they can replace or repair it under warranty. (Guessing: https://support.silentcircle.com/cus...air-or-credit- )

If you do get any information on this from them in private, please update your thread with what was done, so other people can benefit from your work. Best case? They give you directions on how to replace it, and if you paste it on the forums, others will know how to do it.

Thanks!
-Cot

No problem!

Yeah I'll decline to take the step of contacting them on twitter. Thank you, though.

I'll update my other thread with my results in a moment.

[TheCotMan]

Black Phone Review

I was probably one of the first hundred people to order a blackphone. I'm almost never a technology early adopter but the Black Phone offered so many features critical to my business that it wasn't something I could afford to pass up. Let me start off my review by listing the positives, more than one year in:
BLACK PHONE SELLING POINTS
*Thin, pleasant case: I'm not normally one to go ga-ga over technology - to me these things are business tools. But I'd need more than one hand to count the number of times an attractive (woman) came up to me in a social setting to admire my phone. I'm still not used to this.
*Good security record: While rumors abount about one hacker or other getting some traction against the phone OS, from a practical standpoing it really appears that no one knows how to hack my phone, even a year and a half in. What security bugs were uncovered were patched expediently.
*Hardware performance: For the first year I had it, the phone accompanied me everywhere, from a swamp where I was moving off the grid (airplane mode) to important business meetings. The hardware kept purring along, processing calls and texts (my two primary use cases) expediently.
BLACK PHONE PROBLEMS
Unfortunately the phone had a couple of problems.
*Silent Circle requires two licenses to work: By the time that my silent circle license unfortunately expired, I'd only used the software at most a dozen times. This was disappointing. The major problem was not that I needed to have custom software installed. I could work past this. The problem was that it was difficult to talk my friends into dropping 50 euros for an encryption license that would at most allow them to have private calls with me, and me only. Think about it - to use Silent Circle, you need not one license but two. Both the person placing a call and receiving one require a paid license subscription for this to work. This is inneficient. Ideally the call would still be processed if only one person had a license, since the Silent Circle team would still be getting paid. This has been prohibitive to adoption. What's more, there's no easy way for me to get a new license even if I wanted one, because their established renewal process is reliant on credit cards. By their nature, most of Black Phone's target demographic will be the cash and carry crowd.
* No Clear Hardware Maintenance Path: Here is my second problem with the phone. I paid like 500 euros for the thing, and after a year and a half the hardware is starting to run slower. By all appearances this is a hard drive issue. Can't I simply replace the drive? There appears to be no established canonical way to do this. I'm going to create a seperate forum thread to track this issue.
I'm the biggest Zimmerman fan in the world so I really wish I could have given his phone a stronger review. Hopefully Silent Circle will amend these issues, correct them going forward and we can all enjoy a securer phone experience.

I have both BlackPhone1 and BlackPhone2. I too have few contacts that use the SilentCircle apps with account, but several that use (at the time RedPhone and TextSecure (now "Signal".)

There was no simple path to get RedPhone installed. Manual generation, extraction and import of a RedPhone APK was useless for BlackPhone1, since RedPhone (and other apps) rely on the google GPN and other services from google to work.

Spaces support for BlackPhone1 helped, and support for Amazon Android network and others provided some help for some apps, but services like RedPhone/TextSecure still did not work without GPN and other google services.

BlackPhone2 supports spaces (like BP1does) but also allows support for Google Play and apps in spaces. This allows install of RedPhone, TextSecure and other Google Play based apps, and have them work, but when installed in alternate spaces (not the core space) there is no access to local contacts to see who is calling. (There is access to any contacts you push to the google network account that the space is using, but not for those contacts you don't include. So, give up personal info to google, or get no local resolution of claling numbers to names with local address books.)

From your description, it sounds like you are talking about the media/drive that contains the core OS, not the SanDisk. If you are talking SanDisk, for the BlackPhone 1, you pop the back cover, remove the battery, and can slide out the SanDisk to replace it. On BlackPhone2, a small paperclip can be unwound and poked into the small hole on the side to eject a little caddy that the SanDisk can rest.

I have no suggestions for replacing the phone's built-in drive. Have you considered contacting https://twitter.com/SilentCircle silentcircle on twitter and asking them to look at your other thread: https://forum.defcon.org/forum/gener...-drive-upgrade ? Maybe they will respond. Best bet, they will ask you to email their support and copy/paste your request, then privately tell you there is no customer upgrade or replacement for the built-in media/drive. They will probably ask you to snail-mail it to some sort of warranty replacement address so they can replace or repair it under warranty. (Guessing: https://support.silentcircle.com/cus...air-or-credit- )

If you do get any information on this from them in private, please update your thread with what was done, so other people can benefit from your work. Best case? They give you directions on how to replace it, and if you paste it on the forums, others will know how to do it.

Thanks!
-Cot

[umass]

Black Phone Review

I was probably one of the first hundred people to order a blackphone. I'm almost never a technology early adopter but the Black Phone offered so many features critical to my business that it wasn't something I could afford to pass up. Let me start off my review by listing the positives, more than one year in:
BLACK PHONE SELLING POINTS
*Thin, pleasant case: I'm not normally one to go ga-ga over technology - to me these things are business tools. But I'd need more than one hand to count the number of times an attractive (woman) came up to me in a social setting to admire my phone. I'm still not used to this.
*Good security record: While rumors abount about one hacker or other getting some traction against the phone OS, from a practical standpoing it really appears that no one knows how to hack my phone, even a year and a half in. What security bugs were uncovered were patched expediently.
*Hardware performance: For the first year I had it, the phone accompanied me everywhere, from a swamp where I was moving off the grid (airplane mode) to important business meetings. The hardware kept purring along, processing calls and texts (my two primary use cases) expediently.
BLACK PHONE PROBLEMS
Unfortunately the phone had a couple of problems.
*Silent Circle requires two licenses to work: By the time that my silent circle license unfortunately expired, I'd only used the software at most a dozen times. This was disappointing. The major problem was not that I needed to have custom software installed. I could work past this. The problem was that it was difficult to talk my friends into dropping 50 euros for an encryption license that would at most allow them to have private calls with me, and me only. Think about it - to use Silent Circle, you need not one license but two. Both the person placing a call and receiving one require a paid license subscription for this to work. This is inneficient. Ideally the call would still be processed if only one person had a license, since the Silent Circle team would still be getting paid. This has been prohibitive to adoption. What's more, there's no easy way for me to get a new license even if I wanted one, because their established renewal process is reliant on credit cards. By their nature, most of Black Phone's target demographic will be the cash and carry crowd.
* No Clear Hardware Maintenance Path: Here is my second problem with the phone. I paid like 500 euros for the thing, and after a year and a half the hardware is starting to run slower. By all appearances this is a hard drive issue. Can't I simply replace the drive? There appears to be no established canonical way to do this. I'm going to create a seperate forum thread to track this issue.
I'm the biggest Zimmerman fan in the world so I really wish I could have given his phone a stronger review. Hopefully Silent Circle will amend these issues, correct them going forward and we can all enjoy a securer phone experience.