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There might not seem like much benefit to a physical switch on a phone that manually turns off the camera and microphone — unless you’re worried about someone listening in without your consent.
That’s the appeal of the Hiroh, a $1,100 privacy-focused Android smartphone due out in late April that I’ve seen among… Technology displayed in Mobile World Congress 2026. Although it may seem paranoid to wonder who’s listening or watching you through your phone’s hardware, some people in sensitive positions, like many government contractors, need phones with disabled cameras and microphones. Others would rather be safer than sorry when it comes to this Personal privacyIn general or when they travel to countries where digital hacking is more likely.
A decade after Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal, people are increasingly aware of how their activities and data are collected by the owners of the services and products they use. Privacy-oriented alternatives to popular software have been around for some time, but hardware is catching up, with devices like Point MC03 And other phones that intentionally restrict apps and programs’ access to people’s data. The Hiroh Phone is another way to appeal to people with these concerns, with access to more apps and better cameras than current privacy phones, Hiroh CEO Victor Coccia told me.
“What I’ve seen over the last 15 years is that most people don’t want to give up convenience for security. They want to be able to do all the things because we’ve become so dependent on our phones,” Coccia said.
The Hiroh phone is the first device from the company of the same name, which is made up of veteran phone makers to produce a device for a privacy-conscious audience. On the surface, Hiroh doesn’t look all that different from many other ships The phones we saw at MWC As a standard smartphone, it has a glass front and a matte black back, topped with a 108-megapixel main camera.
On the left side of Hiroh’s phone is a privacy toggle switch that blocks access to the microphone and camera — when turned on, the light glows red.
The only thing that alerts onlookers that Hiroh has something else going on are the two physical keys on either side of the phone. One is the aforementioned toggle on the left side of the phone to turn off the cameras and microphones, which happens at the circuit level. Once you turn it off, the app can’t turn it back on again, Coccia said.
He demonstrated how it worked during a phone call, where I heard his voice coming out of the other phone’s speaker until he tapped the privacy switch. Ditto with the camera. When the Privacy Switch is on, a red light indicates that the feature is on.
“(With the switch on) from the government’s perspective, if I’m out in the field talking to someone, I know I’m not being attacked. If I’m doing business in a meeting, I know someone’s not stealing my intellectual property,” Cocchia said. “And if I’m a consumer, I know that the apps on my phone aren’t listening to what I’m saying.”
On the right side of the Hiroh is the other switch, which cuts off all connections when you press the switch – basically an actual toggle for the super Airplane mode, but it cuts off all connections, including Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. This ensures that apps don’t leak your location or tap into other sensors, such as a gyrometer or altimeter, to extract more information.
This is the hardware part, but Hiroh also has privacy features in its software. It has its own app with end-to-end encrypted text messaging, email, and other communication options — friends you want to contact securely just need to download the free Hiroh app and send messages from within.
Hiroh’s phone’s EOS operating system also has advanced privacy options to further hinder surveillance and data collection.
Hiroh’s other privacy software is the phone’s operating system itself. By default, the phone runs the EOS operating system, created by European company Murena as an open-source alternative to Android that has strict privacy controls, including a settings submenu with options to block app and ad trackers, spoof a person’s location and even hide their IP address through the TOR network.
If people want to, they can choose to buy the phone with Android instead and still get the benefits of the physical switch. It may do worse at protecting user data than the EOS version, but it’s still better than most other phones.
The Hiroh is a standard Android smartphone, with a 6.67-inch display, one 108MP camera, one 13MP telephoto camera and a 2MP ultra-wide camera on the back plus a 32MP selfie camera on the front. It’s powered by a Dimensity 8300 chipset and has 16GB of memory plus 256GB of storage to start, with a microSD slot for up to 2TB of additional encrypted storage. In accordance with EU law, Hiroh provides five years of software and security updates. Cocchia noted that Hiroh plans to add more of its privacy-focused apps in the future as part of its support strategy.
In contrast to the Hiroh, the Punkt MC03 smartphone I saw at CES takes a more extreme and transparent approach to app privacy, allowing owners to dial up or down app privacy settings to enable more casual use or completely isolate it from the world to protect user data. But MC03 also requires a paid monthly subscription to supplement its development and support.
Hiroh takes a less aggressive approach to privacy, which likely makes it more attractive to the average phone owner who’s just starting out on their privacy journey and can use a more familiar interface. But both represent a new era of devices that puts privacy in the hands of the people who use the devices, not the companies that collect their customers’ information.