Fairphone

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.
, 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 has been dubbed the most ethical smartphone in the world, scoring 98 out of 100 possible points by the British magazine Ethical Consumer.

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

Social impact and competitors

The phone is modular, which makes it easily repairable and customisable by the user, in keeping with right to repair principles. 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:

A sustainable lifestyle represents the dominant factor explaining the involvement with the Fairphone. Surprisingly, the findings show that alternative consumption seems to negatively influence the involvement with the Fairphone and social commitment 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

Tessa Wernink (right) receiving the Tech5 award at 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.

The Fairphone 4 was one of the first TCO Certified smartphones, receiving its designation in 2021. However, the company had previously suggested its phones exceeded the TCO Certified criteria; indeed, a 2015 side-by-side comparison conducted by Südwind Association, the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations, and the GoodElectronics Network, found the Fairphone 1 to exceed industry standards on more sustainability and social criteria than even the TCO Certified label.

Fairphone has also received three consecutive annual Platinum ratings from EcoVadis, scoring as high as 88/100 in a rating system that covers four different categories measuring environmental and social metrics. This score placed Fairphone among the top 1% of businesses rated by EcoVadis worldwide.

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 February 2025 the official /e/ support for FP3, FP4 and FP5 is based on Android 13.

See also

* Ethical consumerism
* Fair trade
* Framework Computer
* Green computing
* Open-source hardware
* Shiftphone
* Phonebloks

References

External links

* {{Official website

Official community forum

Ubuntu Summit 2023 - Open Source for Sustainable and Long lasting Phones
(presentation by Luca Weiss about Fairphone)

Technology companies established in 2013
Manufacturing companies established in 2013
Dutch companies established in 2013
Fair trade brands
Modular smartphones
Mobile phone manufacturers
Manufacturing companies based in Amsterdam
Dutch brands
Social enterprises
Right to repair