After Canonical asked the world for $32 million to produce its Ubuntu Edge handset, $3.2 million seems like small potatoes, right? All right, it's still a bunch, but QSAlpha's got some big plans for the money. The Quasar IV promises unprecedented security, according to the company's new Indiegogo campaign. That entails military-grade encryption, with either 64- or 128GB of encrypted local storage augmented by a lofty 128GB encrypted in the cloud. The idea here is to "leave no trace in the digital world," and just to be clear, the company's got a ninja in its pitch video to really drive the point home. In fact, ninjas were apparently QSAlpha's starting point: "if a ninja had a phone, what would it look like?" We'd guess more sharpened corners and maybe some smoke bombs, but this is a start.

The Quasar IV will be production ready in March 2014 and available to the general public in June 2014. Indiegogo backers will receive the Quasar IV in April 2014. The Quasar IV offers the following key features:

• Advanced trusted-authentication technology called Quatrix

• Unique digital signature and key computation methodology to protect your digital identity

• Quad-core 2.3GHz CPU, 3GB RAM, 64/128GB encrypted local storage and 128GB encrypted cloud storage

• Dual rear cameras for advanced augmented reality applications

• Android OS with an encryption layer

• Open SDK for the developer community

• Dual LTE with support for 3G and GSM networks

Originally Posted by Estel

Not that it should be able to do anything, that we couldn't *if* Neo900 appears - maybe quazar could do some things faster, *if* they're going to use some specialized-for-encryptions CPU additions.

But, frankly that part about, "secure storage in the cloud" - what are they smoking? If they're doing product for secure-freaks, they shouldn't use such "snake oil" terms, as it makes them look less professional in eyes of potential customers.

When your data is on some funny server you don't control, somewhere on the net, it is *never* secure. Anytime, gov. guys may demand access, and you will never know it. not to mention secret, but mandatory backdoors (germany and USA anonymizers, anyone?).

/Estel

Originally Posted by Estel

]When your data is on some funny server you don't control, somewhere on the net, it is *never* secure. Anytime, gov. guys may demand access, and you will never know it. not to mention secret, but mandatory backdoors (germany and USA anonymizers, anyone?).

Originally Posted by Mentalist Traceur

To be fair, if the encryption key/password/whatever never leaves your phone, and they're just storing the encrypted data directly in the cloud, then it's only slightly less secure than your physical phone itself. Yes, a government could get the data, and you should always assume their bruteforcing abilities are way better than a normal attackers, but if the encryption algorithm is good and it's encrypted/decrypted phone-side only, even if they get it it should in theory take them a decently long time to crack it.

(...)

But yeah, I really really hope they encrypt/decrypt it ONLY phoneside and nowhere else (and are upfront that you are sacrificing a layer of security when using cloud storage). If they fail to do so, then like you say, it is snake oil peddling.

Originally Posted by Estel

Yea, that ninja thing is silly. It have as much to encryption, as sofa to electric chair. Unless it actually electroduce user upon entering wrong lock code