Fairphone May Be The Most 'Ethical' Smartphone You Can Buy

Dhir Acharya - Aug 29, 2019

Fairphone announced its third module smartphone, the Fairphone 3, which seems to prioritize accessibility, transparency, and greater usability over profit.

No matter what you think about modular smartphones, no one can’t deny their big benefit compared with others, they help reduce electronic waste. Our Earth is already fed up with the discarded gadget just because we don’t know how to fix them, which can cause disastrous consequences. Worse, it seems that manufacturers are not helping at all.

However, Fairphone could be different. This week, the Dutch firm announced to launch its third module phone, dubbed the Fairphone 3, which seems to prioritize accessibility, transparency, and greater usability over profit. By releasing the latest smartphone, a successor of the Fairphone 2, the firm shows its commitment to challenging a number of manufacturers that take advantage of their monopolies to hold sustainability and repairs hostage.

Fairphone-just-announced-its-third-gen-smartphone-1 — Fairphone just announced its third-gen smartphone

Why consumers throw their devices away quickly is partly because it’s hard to repair them and the repair cost is too high. For example, if you just break the screen, replacing it would cost a bit less than getting a new phone, so people tend to take the latter solution.

However, if they can buy the original components from manufacturers with low prices, they can either fix the phones themselves or significantly reduce the repair cost.

Nathan Proctor, lead of the Right to Repair campaign at the US Public Interest Research Group praised the Fairphone 3, saying that:

The-Fairphone-is-about-transparency-accessibility-and-usability-2 — The Fairphone is about transparency, accessibility, and usability

One notable and uncommon thing about Fairphone is how it positions its products. During the company’s announcement of launch this week, it pointed to various issues at the heart of the smartphone industry, which include poor working conditions, terrible sourcing practices, electronic waste, and CO2 emission.

Finally, Fairphone not only has responsible sourcing practice through the use of recycled plastics, copper and conflict-free materials, it also rewards consumers that return their phones under its recycling program.

Fairphone’s spokesperson didn’t respond to a request to comment immediately but its CEO Eva Gouwens stated that it: