​The first phone to put privacy and control ahead of everything else is the main idea behind the Blackphone​. Not yet released commercially, the Blackphone is an extremely secure smartphone that allows the owner to customize their privacy and security with ease. On Feb. 24, it was released in Barcelona, Spain at the Mobile World Congress. It has been available for pre-order since then.

​The Blackphone has been developed by Geeksphone and Silent Circle​. Geeksphone is a smartphone producer, while Silent Circle is a company that focuses on providing security for various technological platforms. Geeksphone provides the cell phone side of the team, while Silent Circle brings the unique, new flavor to the phone. Silent Circle considers itself, “​a melting pot of talent founded upon a shared vision of bringing private and secure communications to the citizens of the world,” according to their website.

​The phone was first announced on Jan. 15. Among the main selling points for the phone are that it has fully customizable features, is very user-friendly and can work with nearly any wireless carrier. However, of all the new, enticing features it brings forward, none are more important or innovative than its security, which is supposedly NSA-proof. If the phone truly has that much security, it will further advance future models of smartphones.

​The Blackphone will work in a very interesting way. It encrypts the incoming and outgoing data then decrypts it. If the phone is hacked, the hacker will simply just find the encrypted information. The team considers the phone to have security throughout the entire phone, with every facet full of safety features. The phone will use PrivatOS, which is a version of Android. PrivatOS was created by Phil Zimmerman, who is the inventor of “Pretty Good Privacy,” a computer program that encrypts and decrypts data.

​The Blackphone may not necessarily be the first phone that uses encryption similar to this, but it should have the biggest impact. For example, the GMSK CryptoPhone, according to its website, provides a, “trustworthy solution for completely confidential encrypted phone calls.”

That is quite similar to the idea behind the Blackphone, but the Blackphone will hopefully be able to expand on what the CryptoPhone managed to do. Hopefully it will be at a more modest price too, as the CryptoPhone was sold for up to $2,040.

It is expected that many consumers go after the phone, especially those that have jobs that require high security. The Blackphone will surely be a big deal, and will impact the security and control of phones for years to come.