back to article BlackBerry DTEK 50: How badly do you want a secure Android?

There’s something immediately odd about BlackBerry’s second Android phone, apart from the geeky Sci-Fi name. Something you can’t at first put your finger on. It’s the first BlackBerry ever not to have the BlackBerry name on the front. Perhaps in the consumer market now, the BlackBerry brand is so unfashionable, this omission …

  1. Youngdog

    This one does have front facing speakers for anyone that's interested

  2. Tom Chiverton 1

    Swype has supported swipe-to-delete for ages...

    1. Nate650

      You're probably thinking of SwiftKey.

  3. Hans 1
    Facepalm

    Fingerprint Snesor ? WTF!!!!

    >For tech-savvy consumers it’s harder to recommend, as Huawei has raised the quality around the £220 to £250 mark such that you get a fingerprint sensor. I missed that here

    NOBODY with a working pair of braincells (or more) wants a fingerprint censor! If the image of your fingerprint gets 0wned, you are fucked, sorry for the bad wording, but you can change passwords, try to change your fingerprints.

    1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

      Re: Fingerprint Snesor ? WTF!!!!

      Quote

      NOBODY with a working pair of braincells (or more) wants a fingerprint censor! If the image of your fingerprint gets 0wned, you are fucked

      So what about all those millions of iPhones with fingerprint sensors then?

      Perhaps your comment should be

      NOBODY with a working pair of braincells (or more) wants a fingerprint censor unless it has a hardware vaults to store them in(like the iPhone) If the image of your fingerprint gets 0wned, you are fucked

      I see this as a general problem for Android phones.

      And now we are getting iris scanners... Just as bad then?

      1. Christian Berger

        Re: Fingerprint Snesor ? WTF!!!!

        It doesn't matter where its stored as it'll also be stored on the device itself. You can read finger prints from the screen once you have the device.

        Also unlike a password, it's _very_ hard to keep your fingerprints a secret as you literally leave them on everything you touch.

        1. Andrew Commons

          Re: Fingerprint Snesor ? WTF!!!!

          "Also unlike a password, it's _very_ hard to keep your fingerprints a secret as you literally leave them on everything you touch."

          And they can be photographed from a distance - I think CCC did that to a German government minister at a press conference not so long ago.

          1. bazza Silver badge

            Re: Fingerprint Snesor ? WTF!!!!

            @Andrew Commons,

            And they can be photographed from a distance - I think CCC did that to a German government minister at a press conference not so long ago.

            That did indeed happen, though with the cooperation of the minister concerned (they didn't steal the phone or do anything illegal). It was a highly effective demonstration, and should have been enough to put everyone off biometrics for good for that sort of use case.

      2. 404

        Re: Fingerprint Snesor ? WTF!!!!

        Keep in mind the US Supreme Court says law enforcement can make you give up your fingerprint to unlock your phone - phones locked via pin, pattern, or password are constitutionally protected under ordinary circumstances (no T word attached) via 5th Amendment.

        Something to think about.

        1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

          Re: Fingerprint Snesor ? WTF!!!!

          Well if you have something to hide, don't go to the USA the the USSC ruling will not apply now will it.

          Oh Wait! The UK Plod can send you to pokey for not unlocking your phone regardless of the device's capability to use fingerprints

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Fingerprint Snesor ? WTF!!!!

            Just don't go to the USA full stop. Unless you're a sucker for their security theatre and partial to anal probing of the unpleasurable variety.

      3. Dinsdale247

        Re: Fingerprint Snesor ? WTF!!!!

        It doesn't matter where the data is stored and if it's encrypted or not. None of the methods currently available are transparent and secure enough to guarantee that your fingerprint won't be compromised. ESPECIALLY with Apple and their proprietary kernel. There is nothing stopping the iOS kernel from piping the unencrypted data or even your private key to a secret NOR flash or even embedding it in standard iCloud messages set to the mother ship. Don't believe the puppet play between Apple and the FBI, Apple must by law conform to security requests and the only mobile operating system software not behest to the American government is the soon to be defunct BB10. Kiss your independence and freedom goodbye.

        Oh, and once the Russians can make money on stolen/locked fingerprint data, you'll see a bunch of new and unpatched Android exploits taken advantage of.

  4. asdf

    hmm

    DTEK 50 eh? Guess BB doesn't have much of a marketing department left these days. That sounds like something you would have bought from Tiger Direct or a Radio Shack in the early 1990s.

  5. Gotno iShit Wantno iShit

    Those updates BB promise....

    Does anyone know if they are reliant on having a Google account or a co-operative service provider?

    If not this could be the phone that breaks me of insisting on replaceable battery and an SD slot.

    1. bazza Silver badge

      Re: Those updates BB promise....

      @Gotno iShit Wantno iShit,

      "If not this could be the phone that breaks me of insisting on replaceable battery and an SD slot."

      It has an SD card slot, it supports 2TB cards.

      1. Gotno iShit Wantno iShit

        Re: Those updates BB promise....

        Ta bazza, missed that.

  6. Jim84

    Cheaper Priv

    I was hoping for a cheaper version of the Priv with a better slideout keyboard.

    Also if you are going to make a phone for typing, raise the homebutton and make it into a touch sensitive nub like those on the old Bolds so that you can easily move the cursor around in text, rather than poking the phone repeatedly with your thumb. Put the fingerprint sensor under a button on the side of the phone like Sony has.

    1. Hollerithevo

      Re: Cheaper Priv

      While my beloved Bold keeps working, nothing shall separate us! I am faithful unto death.

  7. Christian Berger

    I see no actual progress on security here

    It's still an overcomplex system where it's likely that you get owned either via a browser bug, or via radio as the "GSM" baseband will still have access to your full RAM.

    Then it has the usual incredible statements like that it's somehow magically able to securely encrypt your data with just your short PIN.

    1. bazza Silver badge

      Re: I see no actual progress on security here

      "Then it has the usual incredible statements like that it's somehow magically able to securely encrypt your data with just your short PIN."

      Well, it doesn't use your PIN as the encryption key. Knowledge of the PIN simply demonstrates rights to the actual encryption key (which is much longer, and safely stashed away). Repeated failure to correctly enter the PIN is a big hint to the phone to forget the encryption key.

      The trick is making it hard to circumvent the PIN and reliably destroying the data's encryption key should more than, say, 10 attempts fail. The trick is to build security in from the hardware upwards, and Blackberry are pretty good at getting the hardware, boot loader and firmware design right. Blackberry are of course at the mercy of the correctness of things they didn't design (the baseband, CPU, etc), but then so is everyone else.

      BTW I'm not convinced the baseband shares memory with the application processor, or at least I hope Qualcomm haven't done that, that would be ridiculous.

      1. Christian Berger

        Re: I see no actual progress on security here

        Well, as I mentioned you can uncap the chip and read out the encryption key. Or whatever that chip does, you can read out its secret and simply emulate the chip and simply reset your virtual chip once it committed suicide. Again, this was done by rivaling Pay-TV companies in the past.

        Blackberry has, on multiple occasions, worked together with governments to bypass the security. They have had severe bugs in image libraries they failed to update. They have sent login credentials for 3rd party servers to their own servers.

        In short, appart from their marketing, Blackberry has done nothing to proof they are more trustworthy or better at actual security than the rest. If they wanted to be that, they'd offer a simple "terminal" using a secure and open standard so you could run your own server and you could make sure the mobile device talk to nobody else than your server.

        About sharing memory a quick search reveales that Qualcomm uses shared memory, though it's not clear from my 30 second research if that means that the baseband can access the memory of the CPU. It's certainly something that's not uncommon:

        http://www.replicant.us/freedom-privacy-security-issues.php

  8. Tom 7

    We can improve the security enormously in Android

    by dumping all that java shit and just using the Linux it runs on.

    Shirley?

  9. bazza Silver badge

    @Andrew Orlowski,

    "That's just as well, because BlackBerry is selling it on security not on the proposition of saving a few quid. The 3GB is generous, the 16GB of storage isn't, particularly."

    It has a micro SD card slot. It supports 2TB cards. Plus Blackberry are pretty good at encrypting things, so there's no real security consequence to using it. Plus modern SD cards can be good for close to 100MByte per second, beating old fashioned HDD.

    You've fallen for the other vendors "lets screw punters with expensive built in flash without the choice" model options. Whereas Blackberry are allowing you to get however much storage you want at a much lower price than, say, Apple will sell it.

    1. diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

      Re: MicroSD slot

      Yeah, it's in the article - in the specs.

      C.

      1. bazza Silver badge

        Re: MicroSD slot

        I know, though I was just wondering why anyone would be a little disappointed with 16GB of internal storage when a huge amount of one's own choosing can be slotted in very cheaply with no real performance or security penalty.

        We all moan about the cost of an extra 32GB in, for example, an iPhone. So a phone that lets you achieve the same capacity at a much cheaper price ought to be satisfying, not disappointing!

  10. John Stoffel

    So what about the belt holster options?

    I'm one of those guys who won't put a phone in the back pocket because I'll destroy it. So a couple of questions: A) does it have a decent belt holster with magnetic flap? B) does it have the magnetic sensor so it knows when you pull it out to look at it?

    This was one of the best parts of the Z10. A great size, good battery, great feel in the hand, and it just worked properly when you pulled it out to look at it, or put it away, the screen lit up or shutdown properly.

    I still miss the Z10, a very underated phone IMO. And with an excellent keyboard and just good all around performance. Until it started crawling with later updates to BB 10.x releases.

    John

    1. Darryl

      Re: So what about the belt holster options?

      That magnetic pouch thing was always one of the greatest BB features

    2. Jerry G.

      Re: So what about the belt holster options?

      I went on Amazon and bought a terrific belt holster with a belt loop, Velcro flap, and also has a locking clip. I have been using the PRIV which is very much the same as the DTEK50, but with a keyboard. It is a terrific phone.

  11. nubwaxer

    my moto g4 has the same specs for $200 without all the spy gimmicks the BB has. i'm a nobody so i don't need them but i could encrypt my phone but i don't want to because i'm a nobody. i do my online banking using a wired internet connection.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Multifunction key

    Wonder if this button will play nice with Tasker, which brings me to my second thought: can it be rooted?

  13. Cuddles

    Power button

    "the biggest annoyance (YMMV) is the placement of the power button up on the left hand side. Where you’d expect the power button to be, you find the multifunction key. My brain is so accustomed to the power button being on the side"

    I'm confused. The position of the power button was annoying because you're used to finding it on the side of the phone, but instead it was on the side of the phone? It all looks entirely standard from the pictures - power button on one side, multifunction on the other. Is the problem simply that they didn't blindly copy the exact button placement of Apple or Samsung? It seems every phone is either complained about for copying one of those two too closely, or for not copying them closely enough.

  14. outer

    SC Blackphone2 vs. BB DTEK50, anyone?

    It would be interesting to see a side-by-side comparison of the SilentCircle Blackphone 2 & the new BlackBerry DTEK50, both of which claim to be the "most secure Android phone".

    __outer

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like