It seems like there are at least certain iphones that can be opened using this method and similar hardware based approaches. Are the feds going to move forward with that? It seems like accessing this particular phone wasn't trivial or cheap. So I'd imagine that it will come down to whether or not it's "worth" the cost of flashing individual chips for each of the other devices.
And what happens if there is potentially exonerating evidence on one of those phones? Does the defense team have to come up with the money to pay for a lab or outside company to open the phone? And also, is an encrypted phone going to be the new 'dna evidence'? Like, will a brand new iphone that's linked to a major crime be held away for years until the security community can hack it, potentially setting people free or sending them to jail?
Sorry for all the interrogatives. Even though this particular case has been settled, there are still a lot of questions surrounding default device level encryption.