The Fairphone is high performance Android phone with a rootable operating system. Its design will feature Dual SIM capability, is easy to repair and comes with a replaceable battery. Taking into consideration the full lifespan of the product, Fairphone has joined existing e-waste programs, has a phone sell back program and offers spare parts of all crucial components through its sales channels.
Fairphone started in 2010 as an awareness project about conflict minerals in electronics and the wars that the sourcing of these minerals is fuelling in the DR Congo. The campaign ran for 3 years before Fairphone realized that to uncover the story behind the sourcing, production, distribution and recycling, they needed to make the phone. Fairphone decided to establish as a social enterprise and design, create and produce its smartphone. It has received funding from Bethnal Green Ventures to participate in a startup Bootcamp and set up its business proposition in London and later about 400,000 euro of private funding to cover operations until its pre-order campaign.
Orders for Fairphone’s first smartphone have nearly reached 10,000 units. The new smartphone contains conflict-free minerals, tin and coltan from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and is made in a factory where a specially established fund ensures decent wages are distributed amongst workers.
“As a designer, it disturbs me that no one in the world truly understands how a mobile phone is made”, says Fairphone’s founder and CEO Bas van Abel. “By buying this phone, you put social values first and join a movement to change the way things are made”.
The Fairphone is high performance Android phone with a rootable operating system. Its design features Dual SIM capability, is easy to repair and comes with a replaceable battery. Taking into consideration the full lifespan of the product, Fairphone has joined existing e-waste programs, has a phone sell back program and offers spare parts of all crucial components through its sales channels.
The phone costs 325 euro including taxes, and part of the profit will fund future interventions in the supply chain. The first phones will be produced and delivered this autumn. Pre-orders for the Fairphone go through web sales only at the buy link below.
