Dutch company Fairphone has announced the sustainable Fairphone 5. The device is made out of even more honest materials, but it also gets some welcome upgraded specifications. Fairphone further offers remarkably long support.
You typically don't buy a Fairphone to have the most advanced mobile phone but to feel confident purchasing a phone with minimal environmental impact. Fairphone focuses on 14 materials you typically find in a cell phone, from lithium inside your battery to the plastic of the housing.
To make the Fairphone 5 as environmentally friendly as possible and to treat everyone in the supply chain as fairly as possible, the following steps have been taken:
- 100% Fairtrade gold
- 100% IRMA compliant lithium
- 100% recycled solder tin
- 100% recycled plastic backing (post-consumer)
- 100% recycled indium (pre-consumer)
- 100% recycled rare earth metals for the speaker (pre-consumer)
- 90% recycled magnesium (post-consumer)
- 80% recycled steel and nickel
Improved display
Apart from feeling good, users of a Fairphone 5 get a considerably sharper and brighter display. Fairphone is, for the first time, applying an OLED panel with a higher 90Hz screen refresh rate. The resolution reaches 2700 x 1224 pixels, yielding considerably sharper images.
Fairphone names the screen "Dynamic OLED," and a durable panel of Gorilla Glass 5 protects it. The selfie camera is on the front this time, behind a punch-hole. It gets a remarkably high resolution of 50MP. Just like the two cameras on the back, by the way.
Conspicuous processor choice
The processor is a striking one. Fairphone uses the Qualcomm QCM6490 instead of a Snapdragon, as many other manufacturers do. This chipset is designed for IoT applications, allowing Fairphone to offer extended support. At least eight years of updates are promised. Fairphone doesn't rule out even longer. The warranty is also longer than usual, coming in at five years.
And should your Fairphone 5 break down in the meantime, you can order and replace parts yourself. You can order a new battery, display, camera, speaker, and USB port. To facilitate this process, a screwdriver comes standard in the box. The usually usual data cable and charger are missing.
Price and availability
The Fairphone 5 comes in Matte Black, Sky Blue, and a transparent edition. The price is set at €699; for this, you get 256GB of internal storage and 8GB of RAM. Fairphone will start shipping the first pre-orders on Sept. 15, 2023.
