Murena Kickstarter pulls in additional than $150K for brand spanking new telephone with a built-in privateness change

The Murena 2, the follow-up to final yr’s de-Googled and privacy-focused Murena One smartphone, is now obtainable to back on Kickstarter and has pulled in additional than $156,000, far exceeding its $26,437 aim.

The massive replace for this new mannequin is a bodily privateness change that, when toggled on, disconnects the back and front cameras in addition to the microphones. (It’s sort of just like the privateness switches we’ve seen for some laptops.) The Murena 2 additionally has a second bodily change that, when activated, flips on airplane mode to disconnect the telephone from networks and activates don’t disturb mode.

As for different {hardware} specs, the Murena 2 has a 6.43-inch display with a 1080 x 2400 decision, 128GB of storage, a 4,000mAh battery, and a MediaTek Helio P70 chip with 4 2.1GHz cores and 4 2GHz cores. For cameras, the Murena 2 has a 25MP entrance digicam and a 64MP principal digicam, a 13MP telephoto digicam, and a 5MP wide-angle digicam on the again.

Like the Murena One, the Murena 2 runs /e/OS, a fork of Android that doesn’t include any Google apps, that means the telephone has customized apps for issues like messaging and e-mail. However, you possibly can obtain Android apps from the App Lounge market. The apps do come from Google Play, although should you don’t wish to log in to a Google account to browse, you possibly can entry {the marketplace} anonymously to browse apps with out monitoring. (However, should you look anonymously, you possibly can solely entry free apps, according to /e/OS documentation.)

If you’re occupied with backing Murena 2, you’re already too late for the “super early bird” and “duo early bird” (two telephones) tiers which have estimated supply dates of December. But the usual “early bird” (for €399 / about $425) and “trio early bird” (three telephones for €898 / about $957) tiers are nonetheless open, additionally with December supply dates, whereas the presale tier (for €449 / about $478) provides an estimated supply date of January 2024. (There are a handful of dearer tiers with December supply dates and extra rewards if these are of curiosity, too.)

There are 9 days left on the Kickstarter.