If I understand it correctly, it is totally known what the hardware wallets do internally. So, it should be possible to implement them in software and I do not need to have the actual device and could just restore on the software hardware wallet with the 24-word seed phrase.
Does such a software implementation of Ledger and/or Trezor already exist?
Of course, it makes sense to totally not do that in production, because as long as it’s a hardware wallet, malware cannot penetrate it (or at least, it’s harder). But such a software could a) serve as a demonstration that people really have to keep their seeds safe and b) be used in order to move to another device, back to software wallets, crack a partially lost seed phrase, …