Based on some recent experience, I'm of the opinion that smartphones are about as private as a gas station bathroom. They're full of leaks, prone to surveillance, and what security they do have comes from using really awkward keys. While there are tools available to help improve the security and privacy of smartphones, they're generally intended for enterprise customers. No one has had a real one-stop solution: a smartphone pre-configured for privacy that anyone can use without being a cypherpunk.

That is, until now. The Blackphone is the first consumer-grade smartphone to be built explicitly for privacy. It pulls together a collection of services and software that are intended to make covering your digital assets simple—or at least more straightforward. The product of SGP Technologies, a joint venture between the cryptographic service Silent Circle and the specialty mobile hardware manufacturer Geeksphone, the Blackphone starts shipping to customers who preordered it sometime this week. It will become available for immediate purchase online shortly afterward.

Specs at a glance: Blackphone SCREEN 4.7" IPS HD OS PrivatOS (Android 4.4 KitKat fork) CPU 2GHz quad-core Nvidia Tegra 4i RAM 1GB LPDDR3 RAM GPU Tegra 4i GPU STORAGE 16GB with MicroSD slot NETWORKING 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 LE, GPS PORTS Micro USB 3.0, headphones CAMERA 8MP rear camera with AF, 5MP front camera SIZE 137.6mm x 69.1mm x 8.38mm WEIGHT 119g BATTERY 2000 mAh STARTING PRICE $629 unlocked OTHER PERKS Bundled secure voice/video/text/file sharing, VPN service, and other security tools.

Dan Goodin and I got an exclusive opportunity to test Blackphone for Ars Technica in advance of its commercial availability. I visited SGP Technologies’ brand new offices in National Harbor, Maryland, to pick up mine from CEO Toby Weir-Jones; Dan got his personally delivered by CTO Jon Callas in San Francisco. We had two goals in our testing. The first was to test just how secure the Blackphone is using the tools I’d put to work recently in exploring mobile device security vulnerabilities. The second was to see if Blackphone, with all its privacy armor, was ready for the masses and capable of holding its own against other consumer handsets.

We found that Blackphone lives up to its privacy hype. During our testing in a number of scenarios, there was little if any data leakage that would give any third-party observer anything usable in terms of private information.

As far as its functionality as a consumer device goes, Blackphone still has a few rough edges. We were working with “release candidate” versions of the phone’s operating system and applications, so it would be unfair to judge their stability too harshly. But since the Google ecosystem of applications (Chrome, Google Play, and other Google-branded features) was carved from PrivatOS, a privacy-focused fork of KitKat, it may feel like a step backward for some Android users—and a breath of fresh air for others.

Out of the (metaphorical) box

Blackphone is, at first glance, a fairly standard-looking Android phone, with what appears on the surface to be a vanilla installation of Android 4.4 KitKat. But in fact, its operating system is PrivatOS, which gives the user a much higher degree of control over what apps running on the phone are allowed to access and what they can do. And the pre-installed applications on the phone, aside from the standard Android system apps, are all focused on keeping conversations, text messages, Internet searches, and application data private—as well as preventing the kinds of Wi-Fi attacks and data harvesting mobile devices are often vulnerable to when away from trusted networks.

Since the Blackphones we tested were pre-production versions—the final, full manufacturing run starts shipping sometime after June 30—the final packaging wasn’t ready, so we couldn’t get the full “unboxing” experience. The demo phones were also European GSM models, so they were limited to T-Mobile’s non-LTE “3G-plus" service. Production phones will be LTE-capable.

The only cosmetic difference between our test phones and the final product, Weir-Jones told me, was a small bit of chrome on the bottom edge of the touch bar under the screen that will be (of course) black in production units.

The phone is cosmetically appealing, easy to grip, and is feather-light (just over four ounces) but doesn’t feel flimsy. While the Blackphone’s specs may not be state-of-the-art amazing, they aren’t embarrassing either. Its 4.7-inch 1280×720 pixel IPS HD touchscreen display is bright and responsive and compares favorably to the smaller display of my own iPhone 5.

The Blackphone's other components are serviceable, but not exactly bleeding edge. Its 8-megapixel rear camera, which juts out 2 millimeters from the phone’s black plastic back, doesn’t exactly have market-leading optics, but it’s fine for everyday use, as is its 5-megapixel front camera. Its 16GB of internal storage and 2,000mAh battery are de rigueur.

There’s one thing that’s a bit out of the norm in the Blackphone’s kit—a 2GHz Nvidia Tegra 4i quad-core system-on-chip. Weir-Jones said part of the reason was that Nvidia was more willing than some of the other SoC vendors to work with a small startup—another SoC had originally been chosen for the phone, but the Blackphone’s engineering team was informed that the manufacturer was about to stop production. Weir-Jones said that Nvidia, which has marketed its Tegra chips mostly for tablets but developed the 4i specifically for phones, was quick to step up.