Fairphone

About Fairphone

This is the phone range, and it is where the company's argument is strongest.

A modular phone competes against sealed phones on features that are broadly comparable. Nobody buys a phone for its adhesive. So the repairability is close to a free addition rather than a compromise, and the long software commitment that comes with it is a genuine advantage rather than compensation for something given up. That is not true of the audio range beside it, where making a battery replaceable inside an earbud costs acoustics.

What the range asks of you is a different way of thinking about what a phone costs. Not the price, but the price divided by the years.

How does this range differ from Fairbuds?

Same argument, much better position, and it is worth understanding before you buy into the company on principle.

The phones can be repairable without being worse. The current generation carries twelve user-replaceable modules, is assembled with Torx screws rather than glue, and was given ten out of ten by iFixit, and none of that costs the owner anything in daily use beyond a few millimetres of thickness. Where the range sits below flagship phones is in camera processing and peak performance, and those are consequences of scale and budget rather than of modularity.

The audio range cannot make that claim. Replaceable batteries inside earbuds cost internal volume and add joins, and those are exactly what a sealed competitor spends on sound and on keeping out wind noise. Reviewers are consistent that the audio products trade sound and microphone quality for repairability.

So if you are drawn to the company's argument and want to test it with one purchase, buy the phone. It is the product where the idea costs you least.

What is the range actually selling?

Ownership years, not hardware.

Two things end a phone's life: a part fails and is uneconomic to fix, or the security updates stop and keeping it becomes unwise. Most manufacturers address neither well; repairability alone addresses only the first. This range commits to both, with seven years of Android version updates, eight years of security patches, parts and software availability stated to 2033, and a five-year warranty.

The spare parts operation is what turns that from a promise into a mechanism, and it is listed here as a product in its own right for that reason. Modules are sold to owners rather than only to authorised repair centres, which is the distinction that decides whether an older phone stays repairable once the model is superseded.

The environmental arithmetic is the strongest single number the company has: a Fraunhofer Institute assessment found the manufacturing cost of a spare part is repaid in 18 to 55 days of keeping the phone rather than replacing it.

Who is better served elsewhere?

Photographers, upgraders, and anyone outside the shipping map.

If the phone is mainly a camera, buy a flagship from one of the large manufacturers. Camera quality is now decided by processing, processing is decided by engineering budget, and no amount of repairability recovers a photograph you did not get. This is the compromise that will actually affect somebody daily.

If you replace your phone every couple of years anyway, the entire premium is for a capability you will never reach. A conventional mid-range phone does the same work for less money, and there is nothing wrong with that choice.

If you live somewhere the company does not sell and ship parts to, the proposition is hollow: a parts commitment that cannot reach you is not a commitment to you. Check that before anything else.

And if you need peak performance for demanding games or heavy professional applications, this is not the range. It sits below flagship level and does not pretend otherwise.