Hi guys. I’m Wessel, founder and director of NovaCustom.
I just wanted to clarify a few things here.
We wanted to increase our products span with a mini PC and a privacy-friendly smartphone.
We do this the NovaCustom way, which means a guaranteed spare parts availability of at least 7 years after the product’s launch and 3 years of warranty. The spare parts can be easily ordered online and we are working on repair videos as well as written repair guides for every component of the SHIFTphone 8.1. This makes the SHIFTphone 8.1 really cool hardware.
The smartphone isn’t really a new thing though, it’s a SHIFTphone 8.1 with iodéOS installed by us. The iodéOS team sells this device as well. But we have some additional features like a privacy screen protector, hardware removal options and anti-tamper options.
Some people claim that iodéOS wouldn’t be private. I would love to see the arguments.
At NovaCustom, we want to support privacy-respecting technology. So if the outcome is that the SHIFTphone 8.1 and iodéOS become more popular in general, this means that the companies behind it will benefit and have more money to invest in their product and services. And that means that NovaCustom customers will benefit as well.
We have contacted the GrapheneOS team a few times. The first few attempts were without any response, till the drama with Android AOSP. A part of the response was:
[ … ] Our understanding is that it costs something like 5 million USD for licensing everything and then perhaps around 1 million USD per year of support where Qualcomm can provide that for up to 8 years after they consider the platform to have launched.
Sadly, NovaCustom does not have the financial power to make this happen.
Having that said, the contact with GrapheneOS wasn’t smooth. It was rather complicated. Banning people and deleting their tickets while they have good intentions is a red flag for us as well.
Depending on Google for the delivery of hardware isn’t a good idea either in our opinion. That way, you still make yourself dependent on big tech and you feed your enemy.
Regarding the installation of the Aurora Store on GrapheneOS, it doesn’t seem to be too hard indeed. Admittedly, this may have been a bit of an exaggeration. But a pre-installed experience is, of course, even easier.
Regarding the Proton apps, we are not paid by Proton for this. Why do we offer this? To provide pre-installed apps that respect your privacy more than Big Tech alternatives.
Minimalistic means less feature-rich, this is correct. This also means less to maintain, so maintaining costs are lower.
On another note, from our experience, the iodéOS is rather cooperative, very friendly, and open for financial contributions, even for specific wished features. So please submit your wishes for enhanced security and we will discuss the possibilities with the iodéOS team.
Regarding transparency, please see the repos as mentioned on our forum.
I wish devices, chips and firmware were open source.
- We wish, too. So this is what we are doing in steps and it takes decades.
We have a very long way to go, but let’s continue to get tech in the good direction: more privacy, more transparency, more security, more freedom.