Fairphone

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Fairphone B.V.
Websitewww.fairphone.com Edit this at Wikidata

Fairphone is a Dutch

conflict-free materials, maintaining fair labor conditions throughout its workforce and suppliers, and enabling users to easily repair their devices through modular design and by providing replacement parts.[1]

As of April 2024[update], the company's most recent smartphone is the Fairphone 5, which it plans to provide with security updates and software support, including 5 OS updates, for 10 years.[2][3][4]

History

A Fairphone employee meeting tungsten miners at the New Bugurama Mining Company in Rwanda
Back of a Fairphone 2 with transparent cover, showing its modular design

Fairphone was founded by Bas van Abel, Tessa Wernink and Miquel Ballester[5] as a social enterprise company in January 2013, having existed as a campaign for two and a half years.[citation needed]

In April 2015 the company became a registered B Corporation.[6]

Since version two, the Fairphone is produced in Suzhou, China, by Hi-P International Limited.[7]

In November 2021, the Fairphone 4 was made available.

As of February 2022, Fairphone had sold around 400,000 devices.[8]

In 2023 a consortium of impact investors led by new shareholders Invest-NL, the ABN AMRO Sustainable Impact Fund, and existing shareholder Quadia, with its Regenero Impact Fund, invested €49 million in Fairphone.[9]

Products

Name Release
date 		SoC CPU GPU Memory
(GB) 		Storage
(GB) 		Display Camera Initial
Android
version 		Battery
capacity
(
mAh
)
Type Speed
(GHz) 		Cores Type Speed
(MHz) 		Size
(inches) 		PPI Rear Front
Fairphone 1 Dec 2013 MediaTek MT6589
Cortex-A7
 1.2 4 PowerVR SGX544MP 286 1 16 4.3 256 8MP 1.3MP 4.2.2 2000
Fairphone 2 Dec 2015
801

(MSM8974AB)
Krait
400 		2.26 4 Adreno 330 578 2 32 5 446 12MP 5MP 5.1 2420
Fairphone 3 Sep 2019
632
 Kryo 250
Gold+Silver 		1.8+1.8 4+4 Adreno 506 600 4 64 5.65 427 12MP 8MP
9
 3060
Fairphone 3+ Sep 2020 48MP (12MP output) 16MP 10
Fairphone 4 30 Sep 2021 Qualcomm 750G Kryo 570
Gold+Silver 		2.2+1.8 2+6 Adreno 619 950 6/8 128/256 6.3 409 48MP OIS,

48 MP Ultrawide, (ToF + Color) sensor

25MP 11 3905
Fairphone 5[10] 30 Aug 2023 Qualcomm QCM6490[11]
(IoT/ind. var. of 782G) 		Kryo 670
Prime+Gold+Silver 		2.7+2.4+1.9 1+3+4 Adreno 643 812 8 256
+up to 2TB 		6.46 459 50MP OIS,

50 MP Ultrawide, (ToF + Color) sensor

50MP 13 4200

Social impact and competitors

The phone is modular, which makes it easily repairable and customisable by the user. According to the company, increasing the lifespan of a phone by two years reduces CO₂ emissions by 30%.[8]

The gold and silver in Fairphone 4 has the Fairtrade label, also metals used are said to come from conflict-free mines.[12] The company promises a 5-year warranty period and long-term support for software updating and spare parts.[13] In 2017, Fairphone's founder Bas van Abel acknowledged that it was currently impossible to produce a 100% fair phone, suggesting it was more accurate to call his company's phones "fairer".[14][15]

In an interview with Will Georgi, Fairphone founder Tessa Vernink mentions:

“There might be a misconception that as a social enterprise, we don’t operate like a ‘normal’ business, but that’s not true. In many ways, most of our choices are the same — we still need to make money and sell phones — but the outcome and the goals are different. Our focus is investing in social innovation, instead of purely technical innovation. When other phone companies design a new phone, they research new technology — we research supply chain improvement.”[5]

A survey conducted by Franziska Verna Haucke in the Journal of Cleaner Production found:

Surprisingly, the findings show that alternative consumption seems to influence the involvement with the Fairphone and social commitment negatively seems to play a minor role in the model. These aspects point to the Fairphone as a technical artifact, centered on a choice for a sustainable lifestyle.[1]

Shiftphone is another small mobile telephone manufacturer with a focus on sustainability, and also developed a modular smartphone. The founder of Shiftphone considers that the two companies working in collaboration could have more influence on bigger competitors.[8]

Recognition and certifications

The Next Web
Conference 2015

In 2016, Fairphone's founder and first CEO Bas van Abel was one of the three recipients of the German Environmental Award.[16]

Operating systems

Fairphones can run several operating systems, including

iodeOS, LineageOS, Ubuntu Touch, and more.[17] Murena, the company associated with the /e/ foundation, also sells Fairphones with /e/ pre-installed and offers a warranty for them.[18]
As of 2023 the official /e/ support for FP3 is based on Android 12.

See also

References

  1. ^
    S2CID 157498710
    .
  2. ^ Gibbs, Samuel (8 September 2023). "Fairphone 5 review: could this be the first phone to last 10 years?". The Guardian.
  3. ^ Porter, Jon (29 September 2023). "The Fairphone 5 is less about what comes in the box and more about what you get over the years". The Verge.
  4. ^ Hill, Simon (22 September 2023). "The Fairphone 5 Is a Smartphone for a More Ethical World". WIRED.
  5. ^ a b Homerun.co (27 January 2017). "Fairphone: Calling for Change". Archived from the original on 22 September 2018. Retrieved 2 September 2019.
  6. ^ "Fairphone - Certified B Corporation - B Lab Global". www.bcorporation.net. Retrieved 13 September 2022.
  7. ^ Hebert, Olivier (19 February 2015). "The path to finding our new production partner: Hi-P". Retrieved 18 January 2021.
  8. ^ a b c Schweiger, Francesca (22 February 2022). "The mobile phones you can take apart and repair yourself". BBC News. Berlin.
  9. ^ "Impact investor consortium invests €49 million in Fairphone" (PDF). Fairphone. Retrieved 30 August 2023.
  10. ^ Vonau, Manuel (30 August 2023). Vonau, Manuel (ed.). "The Fairphone 5 is here, and it's the sleekest repairable phone yet". www.androidpolice.com. Berlin, Germany. Retrieved 30 August 2023.
  11. ^ Qualcomm® QCM6490/Qualcomm® QCS6490 SoCs (PDF), 2021, retrieved 30 August 2023
  12. ISSN 0261-3077
    . Retrieved 19 April 2023. It includes fair trade gold and silver, ethically sourced aluminium and tungsten, plus recycled tin, copper, rare earth metals and plastic.
  13. ^ "Fairphone's latest sustainable smartphone comes with a five-year warranty". www.theverge.com. 30 September 2021. Retrieved 19 April 2023.
  14. ^ Douglas Rushkoff (24 July 2018). "How tech's richest plan to save themselves after the apocalypse". The Guardian. Retrieved 13 March 2020.
  15. ^ Bas van Abel 'Fingerprints on the Touchscreen', March 2017
  16. ^ Lomas, Charlotta. "Fairphone creator: Success is a signal to industry". Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 28 October 2016.
  17. ^ "✏ Operating Systems for Fairphones". Fairphone Community Forum. 6 June 2022. Retrieved 29 June 2022.
  18. ^ "Smartphones". Murena - deGoogled phones and services. Retrieved 26 October 2023.

External links

Media related to Fairphone at Wikimedia Commons

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