NovaCustom launches privacy SHIFTphone (degoogled with iodéOS and hardware kill switches)

Privacy and Security News
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After extensive testing, it’s finally here: the new SHIFTphone 8.1 with iodéOS is now available at NovaCustom! It’s a privacy-friendly phone that’s not only user-friendly and secure, but also sustainable and fully modular. This smartphone stands for privacy, security, freedom of choice, and repairability: values that perfectly align with NovaCustom’s mission.

Why NovaCustom and SHIFTphone are the perfect match

At NovaCustom, we believe that users should have control over their own hardware and software. The SHIFTphone is perfect for this in terms of hardware: it has a modular design and is easy to repair. In terms of software, the original product is less than ideal: it comes with Google software as standard. NovaCustom replaces that software with iodéOS by default. This is an operating system without Google services (only microG, but it can also work without it!). This gives you a privacy-friendly phone with maximum control over your data.

Fully modular and customizable

Modular Smartphone
NovaCustom launches the SHIFTphone 8.1

Whether you want to replace a screen, insert a new battery, or simply tinker with your smartphone yourself, the SHIFTphone makes it possible. No glue, no frustration, just pure freedom. NovaCustom has been supporting this principle for years with configurable laptops, and now we are bringing that same idea to smartphones.

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iodéOS? I didn’t think that would be the case. I kind wanted to see if more Graphene OEM phones would be released other than the OEM devices straight from them. It’s nice to see this happening, as people start realizing what they’re doing is feeding as much data as possible to the corporatocracy.

If they did an OEM for GrapheneOS, that would be fantastic too.

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I think iodéOS was an excellent choice. I’m glad they made a wise decision not to invest time in a platform that has a long, awful history.

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NovaCustom (team from Netherlands :netherlands:)
iodéOS (team from France :france:)
ShiftPhone (team from Germany :germany:)
I also love NovaCustom laptop’s open source firware is from Poland :poland:, same as SSDs and RAMs :poland:.
Step by step :paw_prints: to more open source sovereign tech :european_union:, instead of big monopoly tech.

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And open source apps inside from small teams across the world :globe_showing_europe_africa:

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There are some questions:

  1. OS replaceable?
  2. Open source drivers?
  3. Open source firmware?
  4. HKS (Hardware Kill Switches) easy accessible (without opening the back plate)?
  5. Is modem removed from SoC?

Every time the answer is “no”, it is further away from “full control” and “pure freedom”. I hope at least question 1 and 4 is answered with “yes” - the bare minimum I would expect.

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My guess is that (like the Fairphone) SHIFT either don’t care to or are unable to meet GrapheneOS’ security standards.

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As far as I can tell, their “awful history” consists of community drama that has little effect on the OS. On the other hand, IodeOS seems to have a tendency of being weeks or months behind on security updates which is a lot more important IMO. That’s not to mention security features, firmware updates, etc.

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Everything open source is quite a task, but something to work towards. Like chips inside are licensed & proprietary.

But many people work towards it, for example FSiC2025 - PeerTube “Free Silicon Conference 2025” in Germany :germany: months ago (57 highly technical talks).

Or another great example https://liberux.net/ Liberux phone designed & manufactured in Spain :spain:, with “(Hardware Kill Switches) easy accessible (without opening the back plate)” but their crowdfunding failed some months ago. And their focused on pure linux only.

Its capital intensive. GrapheneOS piggybacked on google’s releases in the past, quickest on the market, but not so sure in the future what is arrangement with their new undisclosed manufacturer or service provider.

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Before GrapheneOS, I had Samsung Galaxy.

I would receive updates once around every 3-6 months.

I checked online, it says the same https://www.sammyfans.com/2025/03/04/samsung-one-ui-update-policy-for-march-2025/

According to the updated plan, 36 Galaxy devices will receive monthly security updates, while 85 devices will be getting quarterly updates. Additionally, 23 older devices will receive biannual security updates

Or directly on Samsung security release page Samsung Mobile Security

Only google provides frequent updates, because controls upstream directly, others lag behind.

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As far as I’m aware, this was because of McCay being unable to control what he said on social media. The OS is still fantastic regardless.

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Cool to see this! Just to get ahead of it, I think there are many aspects of digital rights — privacy and open hardware being a major part of it. From what I can tell, the Graphene team has pretty strict requirements for what they prioritize, to the point they’ve been pixel-only all these years. (I guess rumors of more being added potentially, to be seen) And that’s totally cool! For security, seems awesome. If you value open hardware, not supporting big tech, etc. — not as great.

But it’s a difference in values, so just a good reminder to the community that it’s okay we value/prioritize different things. The SHIFTphone from what I can tell is positioning itself as an open device for people who want something that lasts a long time, isn’t supporting big tech, and allow people to better own their device from especially a hardware level (and on software too!)

Just dropping my 2c in here :slight_smile: I think these different devices/projects speak to different audiences from where I’m standing.

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Hi guys. I’m Wessel, founder and director of NovaCustom.

I just wanted to clarify a few things here. The main reason for this is criticism and questions on the privacyguides.net forum.

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.

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Hi

The most common argument people (or GrapheneOS themselves) make is: there is no privacy without security.

Also there is so much material online of them pilling crap on competitors (and not) (such as Murena this summer). Thank you a lot for being brave and getting into this alternative android space.

It is difficult to avoid such perfect accuracy mistakes.

I will explore details in time:) But in general, it would be nice coloring more of these cells green Comparison of Android-based Operating Systems as time goes on.

Thank you.

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Hi Wessel appreciate for coming forward and responding even if everybody won’t agree to your statement

I forwarded your response to the privacyguides forum since it involves them with making sure to say this as it might be a false gut feeling but you might be scared of facing serious backslash and that’s fine and that’s why I asked and I remind from the Techlore forum

TO AVOID HARRASSMENT Please keep in mind Techlore takes a lighter approach to privacy and security, that is one that most users can get onboard and move forward and please do not harass anyone and anybody at anywhere

With that said as I stated before and this isn’t meant to be rude, I would like you to think of it more of a suggestion to make proper wording of said reasoning:

One thing I will take as proven wrong is their attempt to reaching out to Graphene, it still doesn’t excuse the fact that they said Google Play Store is complicated to install (unless they willing to reword it with “Google Play and make a pseudonymous account” or something like that) but it is something I’m willing to take as me being wrong.

Regardless of the outcome we appreciate you coming forward and address to the best of your ability.

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Thanks Wessel :slight_smile: I think it shows a great deal of integrity when a company’s founder actively takes time out of their day to engage with their community.

In case anyone else hasn’t seen it, Henry did an interview with Wessel, which was published earlier this year:

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I also wonder why you refrained answer same questions on PrivacyGuides when you acknowledged the forum post.

GrapheneOS is already working with another OEM to support devices other than Google Pixel. GrapheneOS literally has actually protections that survived in serious human right abuse situations you can look technical details and news reports, you will find nothing for these custom ROMs, only some chilling from “journalists”.

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.

Why do you think it is ok to pre-install “non-essential apps” by some company? Doesn’t matter whether it is “private than others”, it is still considered bloat.

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There’s no information regarding this yet, so it’s pretty hard to compare these options in any way.

As mentioned earlier:

The Android comparison chart demonstrates there are genuine attributes of iodeOS that still make it a conquerable option compared to stock operating systems for some users. Just check out the Freedom section at the top for only a starting list of reasons someone might be interested in it. Just as someone would pick Graphene for some of the other reasons like security.

Given there’s already an active thread that focuses on optimizing for privacy (Privacy Guides) it’s probably good to reserve that conversation there instead of trying to split the same privacy questions between websites.

There’s some cool tech happening here that’s very hard to pull off that can even long-term support projects like Graphene too. Hardware is hard man.

Disclosure & PS:

I had no idea this device was happening and saw the news when everyone else did. It’s a bit sad to me seeing so much negative, largely inconstructive criticism towards people building something that actually aligns a lot with digital rights values like open hardware + open software + repairability. Of course this is all happening while Google is trying to KYC developers and destroy the open ecosystem making these devices largely possible in the first place. We need MORE projects like this right now.

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The graphene team has confirmed it’s an 8 Elite Gen 5 Major OEM Phone and that’s about it.

I have made potential rumoured OEMs based on specific criterias about which one it could be but none of this should be taken as facts, more of certainty but still better wait till further information, kinda like rumors at this point.

I have to agree here from my unbiased as humanly as possible perspective there is no clues to actually compare them in the other fronts (that is Snapdragon phone running Graphene vs SHIFTphone, now sure, if say Google Pixel running Graphene vs SHIFTPhone, most can argue the ladder wins obviously but I’ll leave it at that) so I think any argument about how effective cannot be validated just yet.

source for claim it is 8 elite gen 5

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I did not even speak about open hardware. :face_savoring_food: I just measure on their advertisement about “fully control” etc. What wessel-novacustom wrote above is a better advertisement than wording that lead to over expectations. Just my opinion.

I think Liberux failed by not taking privacy serious enough and choosing a crowdfunding service that uses facebook and google trackers etc. Many people who’re looking towards to a true Linux phone are also looking how the company is acting regarding to privacy. This was probably not the only reason, but for sure an important one. Two other issues were probably that we already have true Linux Pocketcomputer, so people may feel they can use them instead of being risky with a new crowdfund campaign, while the campaign of L5 was also a mess and so people probably “learned” to be less risky. Especially since it is a new company without any previous trust level as Purism had with their laptops.

Personally I always thought Liberux could be a nice phone and PC replacement in one device (if PC power is enough). I just would not register on Indigogo and it also does not match my needs (much more power than I need as mobile device, much less than what I need as PC).