Benco V80s: Purported high-security device launched without GPS functionality and cameras

Chinese smartphone makers have never shied away from putting out outrageously-specced smartphones. Usually, the specs are superlative, but this new product takes an entirely new approach. Little-known OEM Benco has launched a rather interesting gizmo: a smartphone without a camera and GPS. The firm claims that the Benco V80s is a privacy-centric move that will reportedly make it harder for "malware" to track you.

A peek under the Benco V80s' hood reveals severely underwhelming hardware. For starters, it runs a dated UNISOC SC9863A chipset from 2018, which has eight Cortex-A55 cores clocked at 1.6GHz and an Imagination GE8322 GPU. Memory and storage are capped at 4GB and 64GB, respectively, but you can expand the latter via a micro SD card. For some reason, the phone has a waterdrop-style notch on its screen even though there's no camera sensor there.

The Benco V80s draws power from a 5,000mAh battery, which doesn't support fast charging of any kind by the looks of it. That should be more than enough for the phone's 6.5-inch HD+ IPS LCD screen. Connectivity options include 4G LTE, dual-band Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. There's a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor for biometric authentication as well. The lack of GPS functionality on the Benco V80s is curiosity inducing. It'll be interesting to see if Benco physically removed the GPS module on each unit or disabled it via software.

Benco has neglected to mention the price and availability of the V80s on its website. We poked around a bit on the official website to find out that Benco-branded phones are only available in Nepal, Indonesia, Mexico, Bangladesh and the UAE. Hence, it is unlikely that the Benco V80s will be available outside these areas. We can expect it to cost around US$100 or lower, given that its spec sheet looks like something launched in 2019.