The Fairphone 5 is a bit more repairable and a lot more modern

The Fairphone 5 is the latest sustainably produced and repairable phone from the Dutch smartphone company Fairphone. Like its previous devices, the Fairphone 5 is made from ethically sourced materials by workers who receive a living wage bonus and is designed to be easy to repair with a long period of software support. But this year’s model looks much more like a modern mid-range smartphone, with an OLED display, 30W fast charging, and dual 50-megapixel cameras on the rear.

Fairphone is accepting pre-orders for the Fairphone 5 starting today and the smartphone will ship on September 14 in Europe. Prices start at €699 in the Eurozone or £619 in the UK. That translates to roughly $758, though Fairphone has no plans for a US release for the Fairphone 5 at this time. (He fairphone 4 It finally launched in the United States earlier this year, although it did so through a association with murena.)

In terms of specs, the Fairphone 5 is the first Fairphone to ship with an OLED screen. It’s 6.46-inches in size with a 90Hz refresh rate and 1224 x 2770 resolution. On the rear, you’ll find a pair of 50-megapixel cameras, one main and one ultra-wide, and the selfie camera. contained within a drill. The cutout also has a 50-megapixel resolution. If that sounds normal or even a little tacky, then that’s the point: Fairphone has never been a company at the forefront of smartphone specs.

Instead, Fairphone aims to compete on sustainability. One aspect of this is how easy it is to repair the Fairphone 5, with the aim of keeping it usable for longer and therefore out of the landfill. Fairphone has increased the number of repair modules on this phone to 10 because it now allows you to either replace the rear cameras individually or replace the module that contains the SIM and SD card slots. Of course, the battery is still user-replaceable, but it’s bigger this time too at 4,200mAh, supports faster 30W charging, and is rated to survive 1,000 charge cycles.

The other important aspect of a smartphone’s longevity is software support. Fairphone promises to update the Fairphone 5 with at least five major Android updates on top of the Android 12 it ships with, as well as eight years worth of security patches. That should keep the phone usable from a software perspective until 2031, though Fairphone’s press release says it’s aiming for 2033 as an ambitious target. For reference, the company released its latest software update for the 2015 Fairphone 2 earlier this year, ending seven years of software support, handily beating Android competitors like samsung and Google (Both currently offer up to five years of security updates.) The Fairphone 5 also comes with a five-year warranty.

The length of promised software support for the Fairphone 5 is due, at least in part, to Fairphone’s use of an enterprise-focused Qualcomm chipset, the QCM6490, which is roughly equivalent in spec to the mid-range Snapdragon 778G. . It is joined by 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of internal storage, expandable up to 2 TB via microSD.

A commonly cited concern with repairable phones is that they can’t offer the same kind of waterproofing as other modern phones, whose glue-assisted construction excels at IP ratings at the expense of repairability. The good news is that the Fairphone 5 has an IP55 dust and water resistance rating, which is a slight improvement over the Fairphone 4’s IP54 rating. The bad news is that despite this improvement, the phone it is not yet protected against total immersion. Sure enough, you get protection against more powerful water jets, which is better, but still not perfect.

Like the Fairphone 4, here again there’s no headphone jack and the phone is available in three colours; black, blue, and (correct choice) transparent.

Finally, as well as being designed to survive as long as possible, Fairphone has tried to produce the Fairphone 5 ethically. It lists more than a dozen materials that it has tried to source sustainably, and says that 70 percent of these materials are recycled or ethically sourced. There is aluminum, tin, nickel, zinc, copper, magnesium, indium and recycled plastics, and Fairphone has worked with the Alliance for Responsible Mining, the Fair Cobalt Alliance and the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance in a bid to improve mining. other materials such as tungsten and lithium. A living wage bonus is paid to the 2,000 people who assemble the phone and components like the battery, PCB, and vibration motor.

Since reviewing the Fairphones, my conclusion was that they are good entry-level phones with prices similar to more expensive mid-range phones. But as smartphones have started to change less and less with each passing year, there are fewer and fewer benefits to being on the cutting edge of technology. With its more modern looks and specs, that could make the Fairphone 5 a much more attractive prospect. Stay tuned for our full review, coming soon.