It is not. It is real E2E. Or at least, here is my evidence (and before you balk at a chatgpt link, the links to the sources are also in there). What do you have?
AFAIK, if you can't get a previous device to authenticate your new device, you will indeed lose your chat history. However, I have several devices that can always authenticate for new ones, so I can't verify this empirically.
As the other person stated, in theory yes, but in practice, if you are an "Apple ecosystem" participant, you usually have another Apple device available that you can auth on.
No Apple can unlock your phone with the master key they used to generate your phone hardware enclave key. This is how the FBI has pressured them in the past to unlock devices.
The exact section is "Root Cryptographic Keys," here is the key passage:
```
A randomly generated UID is fused into the SoC at manufacturing time. Starting with A9 SoCs, the UID is generated by the Secure Enclave TRNG during manufacturing and written to the fuses using a software process that runs entirely in the Secure Enclave. This process protects the UID from being visible outside the device during manufacturing and therefore isn’t available for access or storage by Apple or any of its suppliers.
```
