[beowulf101]

Not a problem:

Two questions:
1) How did you get the BlackPhone (looks like it's invite only)?

I ordered it through their website. I will also add that whenever I have raised a support ticket with Silent Circle that they have been exceptional, questioning and on the right level of technicality.

2) Can you load apps from outside their app store?

Yes, you can. It will run any downloadable Android store, however it's advised to never do this in the main 'Silent Space' and to open a new 'space'. Essentially, think of these as BlackBerry Balance partitions, only you can have more than one. I personally keep my main Silent Space to encrypted communications, and I also lock down its connectivity. I put the app stores into separate spaces, and then sub divide different partitions of the phone into different uses - none of the information can pass between partitions / spaces. This keeps your information in each area as secure as possible, and if one Space is compromised, the others are not: and each is password protected with its own password, pin code or pattern.

My BlackBerry Passport is on a BES12 cloud service - I find from an Admin point of view, this to be good for larger deployments. For end users, I prefer Blackphone and the way it simply builds a wall of privacy around activity that users will find difficult to break. I haven't seen Silent Circle's cloud management platform for enterprise, so I can't make any comment on it at this point in time.

At the moment, for mass admin I would go with BB, and from an end user experience I still think it is the best for me and I can't give up my Passport - the Android methods just don't cut it. Does Blackphone cut above BlackBerry in a lot of ways for privacy and security?

Well, yes, it does.

That's really not a bad thing, and nor is it a slight to BlackBerry. They are both quite different in how they handle and do things, and I'd have to say that Blackphone is for someone who is not only security focused, but also privacy focused - BlackBerry is more security focused and doesn't take the privacy element to the same level of detail unless done through a BES12 or other MDM, and even then, not to the same device level degree.

I will add that Blackphone does all of these things without MDM or BES12.

I'll say it again - I won't be giving up my Silent Services or my BlackBerry Passport. They're not the same thing on either a service level or a phone level. I'll also add that Android is Linux derivative, and yes, it can be locked down - Google's Android is something else. What is happening in the background software is very different, regardless of how it looks to the naked eye.

I hope this answers your questions - I love the Blackphone security, privacy and features, but I still loathe my Android experience with it. Oh, for a Hub!!!!

[bhoqeem]

Blackphone 2 is a joke bordering on scam. Try it.
Secure android. Heh. Oxymoron, much?