Fairphone Wants To Make A Smartphone That Costs About $400
If you haven’t heard too much about Fairphone, that’s fair (pun intended, of course). They’re not a mainstream phone manufacturer, and even though they’ve been around for over 10 years now, they’ve been relatively niche simply because of how they do business and the company’s value proposition.
Fairphone is all about making phones that are “fair”. They are made using responsibly sourced materials, utilize only ethical workforces, and aim for phones that are easier than ever for users to repair by themselves. Obviously, it is easy to see that there are no other companies with similar missions, so Fairphone is relatively niche. The thing is, as sad as it sounds, choosing to use fairly treated workforces and materials obtained from responsible sources means that the company’s phones are relatively more expensive than competitors.
That’s been a major barrier to the manufacturer’s exploding in the mainstream (beyond marketing, perhaps), but it looks like the company wants that to finally change. They plan to release a smartphone that is nearly half as cheap as their latest entry.
According to a piece from Handelsblatt, the company aims to cut €300 (about $324) off the price of its last smartphone, which should mean a new device that costs €400 (about $432). That’s certainly a much easier price for most people to swallow. On top of that, they also want to expand a lot more aggressively, to 23 additional markets which will likely be in Europe (though a US release may be possible).
The Fairphone 5 Was The Company’s Previous Smartphone
The last smartphone Fairphone released was the Fairphone 5, back in August 2023, and it costs about $750 to get it right now. For that price tag, you’d expect upper mid-range specs, but I am sorry to disappoint you: that’s not quite what you get. Remember, to take care of the environment, the phone comes at a cost.
You get a plastic back, aluminum frame, IP55 weather resistance, and military-grade compliance. The screen is a 6.46-inch OLED with a 1.5K resolution and 90Hz refresh, so that’s not too shabby. It also comes in a single 8GB/256GB configuration with UFS 2.2 storage and a microSD slot. All three cameras are 50MP, with OIS on the main sensor, an ultrawide, and a selfie shooter. There’s a removable 4,200 mAh battery, and you can charge the phone at 30W when wired.
However, it runs on a chipset called the Qualcomm QCM6490. This is an “extended-life” chipset that was designed for IoT products and is meant to be supported by Qualcomm for a long time; Fairphone promises five years of major OS updates and eight (!) years of security updates. That’s great and all, but while the performance is all right, it does not come close to what is expected of devices at that price point, according to benchmarks.
My genuine hope is that after shaving off over $300, Fairphone’s more budget-focused phone won’t lose out heavily on the specs because even their mainline product fails to hit the upper mid-range mark well enough.
