Fairphone - Misplaced Pages

Dutch smartphone manufacturer

Fairphone B.V.

Company type	Privately held company
Industry	Telecommunications equipment
Founded	January 2013; 11 years ago (2013-01)
Founder	Bas van Abel Tessa Wernink
Headquarters	Amsterdam, Netherlands
Area served	Western and Central Europe except Malta and Cyprus
Key people	Bas van Abel (Co-founder) Miquel Ballester Salvà (Co-founder) Raymond van Eck (CEO)
Products	Smartphones
Revenue	€55 million (2023)
Website	www.fairphone.com

Fairphone is a Dutch electronics manufacturer that designs and produces smartphones and headphones. It aims to minimise the ethical and environmental impact of its devices by using recycled, fairtrade and 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. As of April 2024, 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.

Fairphone is the most ethical smartphone in the world, scoring 98 out of 100 possible points by the magazine Ethicalconsumer.

History

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

In April 2015 the company became a registered B Corporation.

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

In November 2021, the Fairphone 4 was made available.

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

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.

Products


Name	Release date	SoC	CPU			GPU		Memory (GB)	Storage (GB)	Display		Camera		Initial Android version	Battery capacity (mAh)
Name	Release date	SoC	Type	Speed (GHz)	Cores	Type	Speed (MHz)	Memory (GB)	Storage (GB)	Size (inches)	PPI	Rear	Front	Initial Android version	Battery capacity (mAh)
Fairphone 1	Dec 2013	MediaTek MT6589	Cortex-A7	1.2	4	PowerVR SGX544MP	286	1	16 +up to 64GB	4.3	256	8MP	1.3MP	4.2.2	2000
Fairphone 2	Dec 2015	Qualcomm Snapdragon 801	Krait 400	2.26	4	Adreno 330	578	2	32 +up to 2TB	5	446	12MP	5MP	5.1	2420
Fairphone 3	Sep 2019	Qualcomm Snapdragon 632	Kryo 250 Gold+Silver	1.8+1.8	4+4	Adreno 506	600	4	64 +up to 2TB	5.65	427	12MP	8MP	9	3060
Fairphone 3+	Sep 2020	Qualcomm Snapdragon 632	Kryo 250 Gold+Silver	1.8+1.8	4+4	Adreno 506	600	4	64 +up to 2TB	5.65	427	48MP (12MP output)	16MP	10	3060
Fairphone 4	30 Sep 2021	Qualcomm Snapdragon 750G	Kryo 570 Gold+Silver	2.2+1.8	2+6	Adreno 619	950	6/8	128/256 +up to 2TB	6.3	409	48MP OIS, 48 MP Ultrawide, (ToF + Color) sensor	25MP	11	3905
Fairphone 5	30 Aug 2023	Qualcomm Snapdragon QCM6490	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%.

The gold and silver in Fairphone 4 has the Fairtrade label, also metals used are said to come from conflict-free mines. The company promises a 5-year warranty period and long-term support for software updating and spare parts. 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".

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.”

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.

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.

Recognition and certifications

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

Operating systems

Fairphones can run several operating systems, including CalyxOS, DivestOS, /e/, iodeOS, LineageOS, Ubuntu Touch, and more. Murena, the company associated with the /e/ foundation, also sells Fairphones with /e/ pre-installed and offers a warranty for them. As of 2023 the official /e/ support for FP3 is based on Android 12.