schweizer Fairphones have atrocious security and pretend to provide a level of privacy, security, updates and long term support which they're not providing. They're closely partnered with a company that's scamming people, spreading misinformation about GrapheneOS and participating in harassment towards our team. We won't partner with Fairphone and have made that clear. We also already have an OEM partner. See https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24134-devices-lacking-standard-privacysecurity-patches-and-protections-arent-private for more information.
schweizer Fairphone doesn't do almost any of the work on the hardware, firmware or software for their devices. It's nearly entirely done by their ODM for them. Fairphone isn't capable of making a reasonably secure device and has made it clear they aren't interested in it. Regardless, we definitely won't be working with a company closely partnered with a company spreading misinformation about GrapheneOS and attacking our team. You can forget about us ever partnering with them, that's not happening. You should stop bringing them up.
I checked TPM security chips on mouser and it seems they cost around 2 $ each when you buy at least one reel. Usual margins are around 4x so a phone with a secure element would cost around 8 $ more than one without. For people concerned about security this should be a no brainer. They could save some money on memory and the 32 MP selfie cam imo.
TPM is a poorly designed legacy API used by desktops and shouldn't be around anymore. It's not relevant to meeting our requirements since it doesn't provide the required APIs.
de0u There's no need to talk to Fairphone about anything, we won't work with them.
schweizer
One of the purposes of the security chip is to store the "long passphrase" (cryptographic key) on a write only memory.
No, that's not at all how disk encryption works. The keys are not stored in a secure element. That's not secure. Legacy and insecure approaches used with the TPM API are not relevant to GrapheneOS.
The requirements for a security chip in terms of memory capacity are low because the keys stored there are single digit kb numbers. They are high in terms that it is not easy to produce a chip that is not readable even when soldered out.
That's wrong.
Those chips are not expensive they are in every credit card or in FIDO2 security keys (which are available in credit card format as well).
Our requirements are not for a bottom of the barrel secure element providing legacy APIs not relevant to AOSP. Our requirements are for the Android Open Source Project secure element APIs being provided, and it's implied that it's a decent implementation. You should read https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices which makes it clear we need specific functionality, not simply a secure element in general.