For those who understand why that's important, what do you think about CM11 on a Samsung Galaxy Player (no GSM), using wifi VPN to a cheap phone/hotspot which does have GSM baseband, e.g. Firefox phone? Or two Firefox phones, if Android apps aren't important?
Without GSM, you only eliminate the excuse for a baseband backdoor. How do you eliminate their motivation for adding the backdoor? What if they put it it another chip connected to the bus?
Some protection against malicious firmware/hardware can come from ARM's IOMMU with an open-source Type-1 hypervisor, but these are not mainstream yet.
Whatever the technical merits of Blackphone, their marketing is increasing awareness of mobile security. If they can prove demand for this category of solution, it will increase security audits of all mobile hardware & software stacks.
> their marketing is increasing awareness of mobile security
That I agree and I really hope that it works. But on that note, I don't like the name Blackphone. When I hear "black" I associate it with nefarious activities; and that meaning suggests that only those with criminal purposes need privacy.
For those who understand why that's important, what do you think about CM11 on a Samsung Galaxy Player (no GSM), using wifi VPN to a cheap phone/hotspot which does have GSM baseband, e.g. Firefox phone? Or two Firefox phones, if Android apps aren't important?