A new smartphone named Solarin with a focus on privacy and security was launched on May 31, Tuesday in London. Sirin Labs makes many grandiose claims about its new 5-5inch Android phone with a price tag over $16,600 after taxes. Solarin's target market seems to be rich people who are willing to pay high prices for ultra-secure phones.
The new company claims that its customers are very intelligent people. Its smartphones are reportedly made for people such as those involved with international business and financial companies.
Sirin hopes Solarin will meet the needs of such customers. It was the result of the company teaming up with security firms Zimperium and Koolspan, according to The Verge.
The phone's security features include a switch on the back that turns it into cyber-secure mode. Solarin then only allows outgoing voice calls and encrypted messaging.
Sirin is selling Solarin already installed with the newest Android security patches. Only Google's Nexus devices and BlackBerry's Priv have the security updates to the end of May.
In terms of hardware Solarin includes the Snapdragon 810 flagship chip that Samsung decided last year not to use due to overheating issues.
Meanwhile, Solarin's phone is loaded with Android 5.1 (Lollipop). It is quite heavy at 250 grams, which is over half a pound.
The Android phone has a 1440-pixel IPS LCD display, 4GB of RAM, and 128GB of storage. Meanwhile, the camera has a four-color flash beside a 24-megapixel shooter that takes blurry pictures. It also includes a front-facing 8-megapixel camera with a flash.
Solarin also has two speakers under the screen and one tweeter above the display. The new smartphone also includes a powerful 4,000mAh battery.
Two Hollywood stars showed up at the London launch of Solarin including Academy Award winner Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy from "The Dark Knight Rises" (2012), according to BBC. Sirin claims that its Solarin handset provides military-grade phone security to such celebrities.
DiCaprio had also made an investment in a business venture of Sirin Labs founder Moshe Hogeg named Mobli. The social photo/video-sharing site was launched in 2010. Mobli's mobile app allows users to view images and videos uploaded to its website.