"I won't opt-in to the Recovery Service" - Explained and Disputed

The recovery service was never the problem. It's actually a good service (when implemented properly) and n00bs might prefer it.

The problem is the device's ability to access your seed phrase and expose it to the internet.

The co-founder confirmed that this could always been done and now they'll offer a service to do it for you (while sharding and encrypting it).

With all of the other industry-standard hardware wallets, you can see their firmware code and know exactly what they're doing with their seed.

It boils down again to open source vs closed source.

And open source wins when it comes to security.

TLDR You can opt out of the Recovery Service. You can't opt out of the device's ability to leak your seed.