The “greentech” cell phone manufacturer differentiates itself from almost the entire smartphone industry through the promise of repairable and sustainable modularity.
Combine this with a huge push around social duty and moral electronics: promoting fair source fabrics and more important situations for (through a living wage program) through a chain of sources that covers the dirty business of extracting rare terrestrial minerals and all other parts used. in the manufacture of mobile devices, as well as in the manufacture of the phone itself.
The Fairphone four comes with a five-year warranty and a software warranty until the end of 2025, adding updates for at least Android 12 and 13. (Run Android 11 out of the box. )
The startup also hopes to be able to make the life of the phone even bigger, saying that its purpose is the software until 2027 and also the updates to Android 14 and 15.
The new flagship follows the launch of the Fairphone 3 last year, which allowed its old high-end phone to move to just €70 by swapging out some modules.
Fairphone’s new flagship, the 3, costs just €70 as a modular upgrade
Prioritizing reuse to reduce e-waste is a key purpose for Fairtelephone, so while it announces some other new phones this year, it’s taking steps to be accused of generating more e-waste through generating new hardware requests.
The Fairteletelephone four is the first in which it is manufactured to be charged as “e-waste neutral”, as it is said to “compensate” for phones and users’ spare portions by “responsible recycling of a teletelephone (or an equivalent amount of small e-waste”). ) for each of the four Fairteletelephone sold. ” Or, recover and refurbish at least one other telephone to save you from producing a new one.
In some other progression toward its ambitious purpose of making de facto non-public electronics sustainable and moral, Fairphones notes that it has been able to expand its fairly received list of materials, adding six new ones. with Fair Trade qualified gold, aluminum from suppliers qualified according to the Aluminum Stewardship Initiative (ASI) Performance Standard, Rwandan fair trade tungsten, recycled tin, rare earth minerals and plastics.
Consumers have held smartphones for much longer than the refresh cycles of the early years of the market, as the area has matured and device upgrades are becoming more iterative.
At the same time, environmental considerations are intensifying and driving adjustments in the way customers buy and use cellular devices, so that the new and bright, in terms of customer demand, can remain the old for as long as it can be imagined and recycled. responsibly when in spite of everything it reaches the end of its cycle.
In Europe, legislators are also law on the right to reparation.
Fairphone’s modular design, which allows the user to seamlessly switch and update factors (such as the display, battery and camera) if a device component breaks or malfunctions, can provide a long-term view of customer electronics, if regulators overlook the path of enforcing reparability to combat e-waste and incentivise ingestion as a component of measures to decarbonise the economy. and respond to the climate crisis.
Image credits: Fairphone
Commenting on the launch of fairphone four in a statement, Eva Gouwens, CEO of Fairphone, said: “We need to challenge the classic way of designing devices, adding the perception that thinner is better. The starting point of the progression was to produce a durable, high-end smartphone, scalable, easily repairable, designed to last and more circular and fair.
The technical specifications of Fairtelephone’s newest device were also spiced up with respect to the previous flagship, so in addition to 5G, the phone comes with 6GB or 8GB of RAM and 128GB or 256GB of storage, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 750G chipset, reinforced on the rear and front cameras and a 6. 3-inch screen, among other configurations.
The phone will be available for pre-order from today via Fairphone’s online page and through determined partners, with a recommended retail value of €579 (for 6GB RAM/128GB) or €649 (8GB RAM/256GB).
Both variants will be launched in Europe on October 25 on Fairphone’s network of regional distributors.
The colors available for the phone are gray for the 6GB device; and grey, green and mottled green (exclusively on the Fairphone website) for the 8GB phone.
The startup is also diversifying to expand its product portfolio, adding its first non-mobile product, a pair of wireless headphones, made with 30% recycled plastic and with Fairtrade Gold built into its chain.
Can the Fairphone 3 scale the moral electronics of the customer?