We didn't expect much from our last briefing at MWC 2014, one that happened minutes away from the end of the event when it was closing on the third day.
STMicroelectronics, a French semiconductor company that was once the shareholder of STEricsson, better known for its system on chips; the Novathor was used in the Sony Xperia U and the Galaxy S3 Mini.
On display at its booth was a smartphone from US aircraft manufacturer, Boeing. The device, called Boeing Black, was behind closed panels and STMicro had strict orders not to allow anyone to touch it.
Like the Blackphone, announced by Geeksphone and Silent Circle at MWC, it's a secure phone aimed at government agencies and companies aiming to get their data away from the prying ears of the NSA or other spying organisations.
STMicroelectronics provides the phone with a trusted platform management (TPM) security solution, which is slightly disconcerting given that the company is a French one with some rumoured ties with the French government.
Eerily familiar
Boeing states on its website that the phone is designed with security and modularity in mind, a paramount focus for a company with fingers in a number of very sensitive projects.
The phone by itself is nothing exceptional other than featuring Boeing's PureSecure architecture.
It looks externally like the old Motorola Atrix 2. Like the latter, it runs on Android, comes with an antiquated 4.3-inch qHD display, a 1,530mAh battery, two SIM cards (including LTE), Bluetooth 2.1, microSD expandability and a dual-core SoC based on the Cortex-A9 and closed at 1.2GHz.
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