CES Live Blog, Day 3: Even More of the Coolest Tech We’ve Seen
NEWS | 07 January 2026
Punkt MC03. Photograph: Julian Chokkattu Swiss-based Punkt is back at CES with a follow-up to its 2024 MC02 privacy-focused smartphone: meet the MC03. The phone isn't flashy, though the hardware has improved this time around with features like wireless charging, IP68 water resistance, a 120-Hz OLED screen, and a 64-megapixel camera; oh, and the battery is removable (you just need to unscrew a few screws) to comply with recent EU regulations. But that's not necessarily why you're buying this phone—it's a vehicle for Apostrophy's AphyOS operating system (formerly called Apostrophy OS). You can read more about AphyOS here, when I first covered them in 2024, but the OS is based on GrapheneOS, which is in turn based on Android. Your main home screen is called the Vault—you can only place Punkt-approved apps here (these apps go through a rigorous vetting process that takes about 20 days, if the app developers are compliant). That includes the entire suite of Proton apps, a new partnership between the companies. There are several changes to the interface to make it more user-friendly, with a few more customization options, such as the ability to choose what apps appear in the Vault. The Vault. Photograph: Julian Chokkattu The Wild Web. Photograph: Julian Chokkattu Swipe left, and now you're in the “Wild Web,” which is where you can download curated open-source apps from the AphyOS App Hub. During the onboarding process, the company has also made it significantly easier to install the Google Play Store (if you want it), meaning you can still get all your favorite apps and use them in the Wild Web. Each of these apps is sandboxed to severely limit what data is sent back to Google. You can also rotate a nifty slider in the company's Ledger app to restrict how much data access you want to grant an app (restrict too much, and some functions of certain apps may not work). It's unclear right now if the improvements to the software will make it back to the MC02, as the company says some of the new capabilities are hardware-dependent. The MC03 also has a Secure Element to store encryption keys for tougher security. Photograph: Julian Chokkattu Punkt says the phone is manufactured in Germany by Gigaset (though many of the phone's components are not made in Germany). It's powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 7300 chip with 8 GB of RAM, and it'll get 5 years of security updates. It costs $699 and includes a year of AphyOS. After that, you'll have to pay $10 per month—the idea is that you're paying to own your data, as AphyOS doesn't collect or sell your data. It'll ship in Europe at the end of January and will arrive in the US in the spring. Petter Neby, founder and CEO of Punkt, tells me two other OEMs will make phones running AphyOS this year, though they're more likely to cater to the enterprise sector instead of the average consumer.
Author: Parker Hall. Luke Larsen. Julian Chokkattu. Adrienne So. Lauren Goode. Michael Calore. Aarian Marshall.
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