Blackphone has announced plans to make their PrivatOS fork of Android open source in the future, but until then, 3rd parties cannot audit the OS to confirm their security claims.
Blackphone has developed a fork of Android called PrivatOS with a focus on security and privacy. It closes all build in backdoors, and adds additional privacy features like anonymous search, privacy-enabled bundled apps, and better app permission control.
The phone's built-in DTEK monitoring app constantly monitors how vulnerable your phone is. It scans all the installed apps for potential malware or unwanted permissions. It also checks and installs the latest security patches and prevents unwanted access to the camera or microphone by third-party apps. Phone data is fully encrypted and the internet data goes through a VPN when browsing the internet.
The device can be set up so that it can be tracked remotely or swiped clean. You can set up two factor authentication that requires you to use a password and a fingerprint scan to unlock the phone.
While most phones ditched them, the Blackberry retains the physical keyboard. The QWERTY chiclet style keyboard also acts as a trackpad. The small buttons does take some time to get used to, but can lead to better typing accuracy compared to touchscreen keyboards. The space bar doubles as a fingerprint sensor too.
The large 3505mAh battery can last up to two days on a single charge. Even under heavy use it should still have quite a bit of juice at the end of the day at least.
The 12MP primary camera uses the same Sony IMX378 sensor found in the first Pixel which takes some of the best pictures out of all smartphones. The Keyone's camera performs especially well on outdoor pictures while in low-light pictures it's still good but there's still some room for improvements.
The Blackberry’s screen uses a 3:2 aspect ratio instead of the conventional 16:9 in order to accommodate the keyboard. Though it’s fine for web browsing and messaging, it isn’t great for watching videos. Apps like Instagram and Snapchat also fail to correctly display content in this aspect ratio.
Some users have reported that the screen can be removed when slightly bending the device. Although phones made after June 2017 shouldn’t encounter this problem, according to the manufacturer.
The iPhone 8 (with the X) is the first iPhone to implement wireless charging. What's more, Apple decided to implement the Qi standard for wireless charging which is shared by multiple manufacturers, making it easy to find a third-party non-expensive wireless charger .
The iPhone 8 is equipped with a camera that is significantly improved from predecessors. Both the rear and front cameras take amazing pictures, especially at low light. The shutter speed and focus have also been improved from the previous iPhone.
The iPhone 8 can shoot 60fps, 4K video and 240fps, 1080p slow-mo which amounts to some serious video capturing capabilities.
The iPhone 8 lasts 14 hours on a single charge in airplane mode while continuously streaming offline video. Even though it does not tell the whole story on how it would fare during real-world use, tests show that you can use it comfortably for a full day on a single charge without worrying about battery life.
The new 6-core, 64bit, A11 Bionic chip inside the iPhone 8 does not disappoint. Performance is smooth, as is expected from an iPhone, and, according to GeekBench, the iPhone 8 has 25% better performance on single core and 80% better performance on multi core compared to the iPhone 7.
Since Apple decided to ditch their design with an aluminium back and return to the glass back, having a cover for the 8 is almost a necessity since dropping it means you risk breaking both sides of the phone (back and screen) at once.
As always, Apple does not disappoint in the design department. The iPhone X is a beautiful phone with round edges that make it easy to hold in your hand. The slippery metallic back portion from the iPhone 7 has been replaced by a glass section which makes it harder for the phone to slip from your hand. But it should be mentioned that the glass part in the back is like a fingerprint magnet.
At 5.8 inch the iPhone X has got the biggest display out of all iPhones, but due to the small bezel it managed to stay smaller than the iPhone 7 Plus and is quite easy to use with one hand.
In the past, to open the home screen that listed your apps, you just needed to press the physical home button. Since the iPhone X does not have a physical home button, you have to swipe the screen from the bottom up to go there. This can be a bit awkward since you can accidentally switch screens when scrolling through a web page for example.
With iOS 11 and the removal of the home button the iPhone relies on screen gestures much more than in the past. It may take some time to get used to the new gestures and while not extremely complicated, it adds some complexity which has not been present in old iOS versions and goes against the whole "just works" philosophy that has made the iPhone what it is today. For example:
To go to the home screen you swipe up from the bottom of the display.
To access the control center you swipe down from the top of the screen.
To open notifications you swipe right.
To open the camera you need to swipe left.
The removal of the home button unfortunately also brought the removal of TouchID. Apple has planned to replace the fingerprint reader with the new FaceID but it's not really an equivalent replacement since both of these security measures are completely different even if they both serve the same purpose. It would be similar to removing password locking when TouchID was first introduced.
Since both the hardware and software are designed in-house, Apple can make their software much more efficient than other phone manufacturers that have no say in OS design. As such, the iPhone X (and older versions) works flawlessly and has virtually no lag or stuttering to speak of.
The new 6-core, 64bit, A11 Bionic chip inside the iPhone X (and iPhone 8) does not disappoint. Performance is smooth, as is expected from an iPhone, and, according to GeekBench, the iPhone X has 25% better performance on single core and 80% better performance on multi core compared to the iPhone 7.
The iPhone X is the first iPhone to implement wireless charging. What's more, Apple decided to implement the Qi standard for wireless charging which, among other things, lets you monitor multiple devices charging wirelessly at the same time.
The iPhone X is the first iPhone with an OLED screen. OLED is the best smartphone screen technology on the market at the moment and the jump to OLED screens was long overdue for the iPhone. The 5.8 inch screen has rich, vibrant colours and inky blacks due to the 2436 x 1125 resolution. It's quite bright as well so you won't have any issues using the phone under direct sunlight.
The iPhone X's FaceID security system recognizes the user's face and uses the front-facing camera to unlock the phone. While it's true that other smartphones have had this technology for years, it's never been this secure. FaceID uses infrared technology to create a 3D map of the face, making it impossible to unlock the phone using a photography of the owner (like you can do with most other phones with a face recognition system).
Since Apple decided to ditch their design with an aluminium back and return to the glass back, having a cover for the X is almost a necessity since dropping it means you risk breaking both sides of the phone (back and screen) at once.
The iPhone 8 Plus lasts 14 hours on a single charge in airplane mode while continuously streaming offline video. Even though it does not tell the whole story on how it would fare during real-world use, tests show that you can use it comfortably for a full day on a single charge without worrying about battery life.
The iPhone 8 plus is equipped with a camera that is significantly improved from predecessors. Both the rear and front cameras take amazing pictures, especially at low light. The shutter speed and focus have also been improved from the previous iPhone.
The iPhone 8 plus can shoot 60fps, 4K video and 240fps, 1080p slow-mo which amounts to some serious video capturing capabilities.
The iPhone 8 plus (with the X) is the first iPhone to implement wireless charging. What's more, Apple decided to implement the Qi standard for wireless charging which is shared by multiple manufacturers, making it easy to find a third-party non-expensive wireless charger .
The new 6-core, 64bit, A11 Bionic chip inside the iPhone 8 Plus does not disappoint. Performance is smooth, as is expected from an iPhone, and, according to GeekBench, the iPhone 8 Plus has 25% better performance on single core and 80% better performance on multi core compared to the iPhone 7.
Unfortunately the camera module for the iPhone still forms a bump a few millimetres wide on the back. It's quite annoying especially since that extra space could have been filled with extra battery.
The iPhone 8 plus uses the same design introduced by the iPhone 6, albeit with some small differences like the back being glass instead of metal. The biggest eyesore however are the relatively large bezels around the screen, bezels which the iPhone 8 does not have.
Other than being aesthetically pleasing, edge-to-edge screen also serve a practical purpose: they let you have a larger screen without increasing the overall size of the phone and in this case the screen could have been a couple of inches larger.
Since Apple decided to ditch their design with an aluminium back and return to the glass back, having a cover for the X is almost a necessity since dropping it means you risk breaking both sides of the phone (back and screen) at once.