this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2023
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I doubt they make much, if any money, on the hardware. I paid ~$100 for my P7 w/ P5 trade-in
They make the most open and secure hardware, full stop.
"full stop"
https://murena.com/
...yes? Was there something you wanted to add?
The Murena 2 doesn't have a secure element like Pixels do with their Titan M chip. That is also the reason why the Graphene devs don't bother with porting their OS to phones like the Fairphone or Murena. The only Android phone that can be as secure if not more secure than an iPhone is the Google Pixel running GrapheneOS. Edit: You can watch this video to learn why a secure element is important for maintaining good security: https://piped.video/watch?v=yTeAFoQnQPo
The Titan M chip is a Trusted Platform Module. The pixel phone isn't the only one to have that. How To Geek has a simple explanation. Stock Android can take advantage of it from the get go thanks to the hardware backed keystore.
Verified boot is not Google Pixel related either. It's been there since Android 4.4. It isn't hardware related either as standard PCs have something similar: UEFI which allows secure boot. Here's a great article on how it works with linux.
The rest of the video focuses on software related security, not hardware. I find it very hard to believe that no other vendor doesn't fulfill the specs required for GrapheneOS. Honestly, I believe the devs just want to limit the amount of work they have for themselves, which is fine, but they don't have to go to the lengths of claiming "Google is the only vendor to make secure hardware". That just doesn't seem believable at all.
AFAIK the Titan M series is by far the strongest implementation that can be found in a phone. I'm not aware of any other commercially available chip that has support for so many security features like Insider Attack resistance, the Weaver API, Android Strongbox, etc. Also, there are still many phones on the market, that don't have a secure element at all.