For privacy-minded people, hardware switches are a nice thing. I remember when I had a Xiaomi Mi 9T with its popup camera, and it was interesting to see that some websites would trigger said popup camera. While the camera was never actually used, the thing would go up and down. This was even with an ad blocker installed.
Man, it has been a while, as I don't use the 9T as the daily phone now. I think I recall The Verge as one of the sites, because I wasn't expecting it from them. It happened only a few times, and it wasn't site-wide. Can't remember which pages triggered it though.
Speakers are microphones, they are the same thing(basically), one uses current to move a diaphragm to create pressure and the other uses pressure to move the diaphragm to create a current.
Only mic and camera? It should also turn off GPS, accelerometer, etc. Filming the inside of my pocket isn't the biggest tracking concern. People are just afraid someone's watching them masturbate all the time.
Isn't GPS just 3 sattelites passively shouting their clock to any who could listen? There's no GPS kill switch because there's nothing transmitted.
WIFI kill switch is more understandable.
Privacy isn't just about your device not emitting signals... If you don't want your device and apps to track your location, you also don't want to receive those GPS signals.
I went with the Galaxy XCover 6 Pro instead because it comes with a headphone jack. It also has a software switch to disable microphones, but I wouldn't put too much faith on that.
Its /e/OS, a softfork of LineageOS, mostly superficial. Only GrapheneOS is extremely secure, although to be fair really degoogled LineageOS will probably be very nice too