Re: Not really comparable
"The researcher himself acknowledges the risk of damaging the chip when desoldering it."
Then he's not much into electronics himself either, and I'm fine telling this straight to his face if need be. No, the actual risk is not strictly zero, but it's indistinguishable from it as long as de-soldering is done by a halfway decent technician - and ANY three-letter agency should have people that can do it blindfolded, with their hand tied behind their back, in their sleep, at negligible risk, so future official attempts would be even safer. Same goes for accessing the contents of the flash. As long as you have half a clue of what you're doing (and you have the _datasheet_ of the chip - may or may not be the case here) there should be no risk to speak of. How you decrypt it and what risks exist if you place that memory or a clone of it back into a live phone is an entirely different matter - but woo-wooing up an operation simply called "rework" and routinely performed all the time is a massively pompous hyperbole.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
