Wired UK's Jeremy White reports that the $72 million venture startup Sirin Labs has launched the Solarin, a luxury smartphone with a design emphasis on "military-grade" security:
Headed by former Google and Sony Mobile alumni Tal Cohen and Fredrik Öijer, Sirin Labs aims to compete with the likes of the encryption-focused Blackphone from Silent Circle, GranitePhone, various BlackBerry options and Samsung's KNOX mobile security software. Firmly knocking on the door of competitor brand Vertu and its £6,500 Signature Touch high-end mobile, the £9,500 Solarin is supposedly aimed at the “international business person who carries a lot of sensitive information” and “doesn’t want to compromise on usability, quality or design."
In terms of security, the Solarin comes with mobile threat protection courtesy of Zimperium, which looks to stop an array of device, network and application-based mobile cyberattacks. Sirin has also partnered with KoolSpan, a company that specialises in mobile voice and messaging security, to build in chip-to-chip 256-bit AES encryption – supposedly the same technology that militaries around the world use to protect communications.
Aside from security, what does £10,000 [approx. $14,500 USD] buy you in the world of luxury smartphones? The handset boasts Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 processor with X10 LTE and Wi-Fi (450mbps downlink, 150mbps uplink); support for 24 bands LTE compatibility so it can be a "global phone", plus using 802.11ac 2x2 MU-MIMO the phone can reach three times the bandwidth of a standard smartphone; there's also WiGig Wi-Fi, which pushes data transfer to 4.6Gbps. Qualcomm Quick Charge is included for fast charging, too.
