In a post-Snowden world, privacy has become an integral part of our lives. We have seen in TV shows and movies where the protagonist and spies carry an uncrackable, heavily encrypted phone. Turing Robotics Industries has launched a smartphone, the Turing Phone, which the company claims is unhackable and unbreakable. Appropriately named after Alan Turing, the first person to develop cryptographic machines, otherwise known as computers, the device will launch in India by the first week of September, starting at a price of Rs. 55,000.
If the price seems too steep, there is a reason behind it. The Turing Phone has been constructed from a material called Liquidmorphium, which is stronger than titanium and steel. It uses nano-coating to cover the internal parts, which makes it waterproof. To round off its main selling point, the phone has built-in end-to-end encryption in its core apps, which means servers and third parties cannot intercept your calls and messages. The phone has been built keeping security in mind. To that extent, it doesn’t even has a headphone jack or a USB port. It is meant to be unhackable.
On the specifications front, the Turing Phone runs on the 2.5 GHz Snapdragon 801c processor with 3GB of RAM. The phone supports 4G LTE and is powered by a 3000 mAh non-removable battery. The rest include a 5.5 inch full HD display, a 13MP rear and an 8MP front camera and a fingerprint scanner on the left side of the phone. The phone runs on Android 5.1 Lollipop with Turing Aemaeth UI. The phone can be charged via a magnetically attached power connector, like Apple’s MagSafe.
It is available in three variants – 16GB, 64GB and 128GB. In India, the 64GB variant will be available for a price of around Rs. 55,000 and the 128 GB variant will be available at a price of around Rs. 68,000. The Turing Phone comes in three models – Pharaoh, Cardinal, and Beowulf, each one taking colour and texture cue from the source material.
Turing Robotics’ CEO SYL Chao hopes that the material used in the Turing Phone will become standard in the near future. In the present, it seems that the phone will only attract businessmen and people working at higher positions in corporate sectors, considering its steep price tag.
Leave a Reply