ARCHOS announces the privacy-centric GranitePhone to take on the Blackphone

Smartphone owners will often argue over which mobile platform is the most secure, but if you're looking for the ultimate security, you need to step away from the mainstream. Silent Circle is probably the best known off-the-beaten-track company thanks to its ultra-secure Blackphone, but now there is a new contender: the GranitePhone by SIKUR.

Just as the Blackphone 2 runs the custom-made Silent OS 2.0, so the GranitePhone is driven by Graphite OS. It's a handset aimed at not only governments and businesses looking to secure their communications and data, but also individuals who are particularly concerned about their privacy.

While the phone offers "unrivalled focus on security, eliminating loopholes which could allow data theft and spying" the hardware specs are quite reasonable. We're not talking flagship device territory here, but this is a perfectly capable handset -- and don’t forget, this is not really a phone designed for anything other than business and private communication. Here's what the GraphitePhone is made of:

CPU: Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 Octa-Core 64bits

GPU: Qualcomm Adreno 405

RAM: 2GB

Display: 5-Inch Full-HD

Operating System: Granite OS

Internal Storage: 16GB

Camera: Back 16MP / Front 8MP

Power: 2700mah Battery

ARCHOS has teamed up with SIKUR to create the GraphitePhone, and makes the rather bold claim that: "we managed to design a completely secure, private and productive device, eliminating any breach against your privacy, data theft and espionage".

If the 16GB of storage seems a little paltry, it's backed up by cloud expansion. Any data stored in the cloud is automatically encrypted, and apps are available that allow this data to be accessed from a computer, or an iOS or Android device.

The GraphitePhone can be yours for $849.