A Non-Traditional Review of the Fairphone

My experience with a sustainable smartphone and thoughts on green consumerism

Fairphone refers both to the Amsterdam-based electronics company and to their flagship product — the first sustainable smartphone. What makes the Fairphone unique is that it’s made of recyclable materials and designed to be long-lasting. Currently, the industry standard is to design phones with planned obsolescence in mind. Corporate executives, manufactures, and their designers do this through using cheap and fragile parts, making phones difficult to repair, and only supporting the software for a few years. When they can get away with it, these companies “update” the products to be worse after newer versions come out. The goal of Fairphone was to create a product that challenges all of these ideas. They designed a phone with sturdy parts that’s easy to repair by the average person. The company has a five year warranty and with plans to extend their support even longer.

While Fairphone has existed for over a decade, you could not buy them in the US until a year ago. This was likely because none of the US phone companies would support the model. Doing so would challenge their bussiness design of endless consumerism. What changed is that Fairphone decided to partner with the niche company, Murena, which focuses on privacy-oriented electronics that are “deGoogled.” They run on the e/OS/ system — an alternative to Android and Apple. T-Mobile also agreed to support the phone so you can use it with any company on their network.

Fortunately, I was already on the T-Mobile network. I was also not only willing, but cautiously enthusiastic about using a deGoogled phone. The Fairphone was the first big purchase I made after graduation. It’s been good so far. It works like most other smartphones. Though the problem with reviewing a made-to-last product is that I can’t speak to how it will work five to ten years from now. I also can’t speak to how easy it is to repair because it hasn’t needed fixing yet. What I can speak to is my experience with a deGoogled phone and on how the story of the Fairphone shows both the promise and limits of green consumerism.

Using a deGoogled Phone

It’s now been eight months since I started using the Fairphone. Overall, using a deGoogled phone has been less of an inconvenience than I expected. In many cases, the the non-Google and Microsoft applications are better due to enshittification — I’ve posted before about my experience with deGoogling in the context of avoiding ads. It used to be the case that most alternatives to standard apps, websites, and software were much worse and/or more difficult to navigate. That is no longer the case now that major companies are making their products worse in service of corporate interests and filling them with AI garbage.

However, there are some alternative products that are worse and, even when they’re better, it can be difficult to navigate situations when everyone else is using a standard service. I tried using open source GPS navigation apps and quickly switched back to Google Maps. The alternatives aren’t there yet. They’re confusing to use, slow, and always assume I’m in Europe.

Depending on your lifestyle, you’ll find that there are many situations where people and systems assume you have a standard Google or Microsoft account. More and more websites require one when you sign up — though most still allow you to use an alternative email service. Most workplaces use Google and Microsoft products. I had to download Outlook and Teams because of work. While I like my new calendar app, I still have to use my Google calendar to coordinate with others. Some of these problems will be better or worse depending on how much you need certain apps for work, family, friends etc.

The biggest inconvenience that’s specific to how the Fairphone is set up is that you can’t easily pay for apps. You can download apps you already paid for but if you want to buy an app not already associated with your account then you have to engage in some annoying run arounds. I rarely buy apps and hoped this wouldn’t be a problem, but it did come up when I wanted to access certain features on an excellent privacy-centered writing app (Writer Journal). To pay for it, I ended up turning on my old phone, buying the app on that one, and then waiting a day for it to update on my Fairphone.

Overall, the experience has been good and the inconveniences are worth it. Using the e/OS/ network encouraged me to use various open-source and privacy focused apps — most of which are better than the typical Google or Microsoft version. I haven’t spoken on the comparison to Apple products because I’ve never used any of them. Apple is a better company than Google when it comes to privacy, but I’ve never liked them due to company’s egregious examples of planned obsolescence, their high price tag, and the cult-like mentality of some of their users. A small bonus to owning a Fairphone is getting to say you have a Linux phone whenever an Apple versus Android debate comes up.

The Promise and Limits of Green Consumerism

To become an environmentally-friendly world, we need things that are sustainable in design and use. We need products that last, are made of renewable materials, and are easy to repair. The Fairphone provides an option for a more environmentally-conscious phone. While its design isn’t perfect, it shows that it’s possible to create something as complex as a smartphone with more sustainable methods. Hopefully, that’ll inspire others to create similarly complex modern devices that are reliable and fixable — I can’t wait to buy a solid laptop that lasts me more than five years.

The Fairphone also shows that there is demand for sustainable products even if they cost slightly more. More and more people prioritize climate-friendly design over the latest technical gimmick.

Small actions make a difference. It adds up when thousands of people choose to use the same phone that needs small repairs over buying a new one every couple of years. While there is understandable frustration with the bias towards individual-solutions in regards to climate change, that doesn’t mean there’s no place for individual action. Changing our lifestyles, especially those of us in industrialized nations, is necessary even if it isn’t sufficient. We can see those limits through the barriers the Fairphone has faced and the difficulties in using a deGoogled device.

Clear demand for a product doesn’t matter when corporations refuse to meet that demand because it could hurt their profits. It is fortunate that the Fairphone was able to find a US distributor. That doesn’t always happen. It is now widely known that florescent light bulb companies worked together in the 1920s to artificially limit how long lightbulbs could last. There has always been demand for products that don’t break. That doesn’t mean that demand will be met.

Even when companies can and will create reliable products, that doesn’t mean they will do well financially. Our current economic system relies on constant growth. A company that makes a product you only need to buy once will go out of business if they can’t find a way to support themselves on a non-traditional model or create other successful products. It’ll be much harder to keep using a Fairphone if the company ever goes under or undergoes new management that doesn’t prioritize sustainability. If they can’t keep updating the software or sell parts for repair, then the Fairphone won’t be usable for most people.

Then there is the problem that it’s harder to use something that’s not compatible with mainstream systems even if there isn’t outright opposition (usually there is). I had to compromise and use Google or Microsoft-based apps because my work requires it. Everyone who uses the device still has to create a Google account to use the app store at all. This is more obviously a problem with using the deGoogled aspect of the phone but it’s not limited to software. You can see this with electric cars. My partner has been discussing buying electric when their car breaks down, but a barrier has been making sure there are enough charging stations in routes to nearby cities. Our world is interconnected and humans are social creatures. We need objects and software that work with other people.

I’m not not even going to get into the risk of greenwashing. I’m not an expert on phone design so I just have to trust that Fairphone has practices that are actually sustainable. We can’t rely on every individual being able to tell whether a company is truthful or not.

Products like the Fairphone are a necessary step to creating a more sustainable future, but the companies that make sustainable goods will not be able to heal the environment just by creating better products. We need a different economic system that supports businesses and individuals in creating sustainable, reliable goods. We need systems in place that ensure people can create these products, that check the accuracy of sustainability claims, and that close barriers to using environmentally-friendly products. It is both true that more companies should design products like the Fairphone and that doing so will never be enough without other structural changes in the world.

A Note on Dropability and Male-Biased Design

This section didn’t really fit with the rest of the post, but I had to include it.

The Fairphone is hardy. I know this because I have dropped it almost every day. It did crack a little in the corner after a few weeks, but the crack hasn’t grown. I drop it so often because I am clumsy but also because I am a woman with small hands.

While writing this post, I read Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez (who also has a Substack). It’s an excellent book about male-bias in just about everything in the modern world (medicine, public transport, disaster relief etc.). She includes a section about how the average smartphone size has grown and is now so big that it no longer fits comfortably in the average woman’s hands. This information made me pause and realize that, while I’ve always been clumsy, I’ve never dropped a phone this often. The Fairphone is the biggest phone I’ve ever used and it does not fit in my hands comfortably. In fact, I grab my headphones when talking to someone on it for more than a few minutes.

It’s great that dropping the phone so much hasn’t damaged it beyond some minor cosmetics. It’s unfortunate that such a progressive company didn’t address the issue that the size of the phone is too big for anyone who isn’t the average man. This information about phone size and gender has been studied since before 2019, when Invisible Women came out. While this section didn’t fit with the rest of the review, I knew I had to bring this up and raise awareness for anyone else with small hands who wonders why they drop their phone more than they used to.