In a world obsessed with megapixels, where smartphone brands are flexing 64MP, 108MP, even 200MP cameras — something bizarre keeps popping up on the internet. It looks just like your average iPhone... except for one key thing: it has no camera. Yep, zero lenses. No selfies. No portrait mode. Nada.
Why would anyone want an iPhone without a camera?
Turns out, there are places where carrying a camera phone is a total no-go — think military zones, defense research facilities, nuclear plants, or ultra-private workplaces.
In some religious or conservative countries, students aren’t even allowed to carry camera phones at school. But that doesn’t mean people are ready to ditch iOS and and those blue bubbles for some clunky brick phone.
Enter: the camera-less iPhone.
From DIY hacks to a full-blown market
Back in the day, if you needed a cam-free phone, your best bet was taking your iPhone to a local repair shop and asking them to physically remove the cameras — then patch the holes with epoxy or resin. It was janky, but it worked.
But soon, a legit market opened up. A US-based company Non Cam jumped in around 2011 and began selling brand new iPhones with the cameras removed — clean finish, full warranty, all Apple features intact (minus the ones that used a camera, obviously).
They also offered DIY kits with special backplates for anyone brave enough to do the surgery at home.
And mind you, their products weren’t cheap either: the conversion kits ranged from $170 to $250. Want a pre-modded iPhone 8 in 2017? That would’ve set you back $1,380 — almost double the retail price of a regular iPhone 8 at the time.
Who’s buying these, anyway?
Companies like NonCam have a surprisingly large users number of people. From employees at government facilities to students in camera-restricted zones, to privacy freaks who just don’t want to risk a hacked webcam moment — this niche had its audience.
Non Cam even pitched themselves as the answer to the “dumb phone” problem. Their message? Why suffer on some laggy Android with no camera, when you can have a legit iPhone, just minus the lenses?
Privacy > selfies?
In a time where spyware can turn your camera into a 24/7 surveillance tool, having no camera at all might be the ultimate privacy flex. It’s kind of ironic — while most of us are out here looking for the sharpest image sensor, there’s a whole group opting out of photography altogether.
Maybe in a surveillance-filled world, going no-cam is the new smart.
