Smartphone
Fairest of them all, Jonni Bidwell is excited by an ethical phone with a privacy-respecting operating system.
Netherlands-based Fairphone has made a name for itself with its eponymous line of modular, N repair-friendly and, well, fair phones. Besides being made in factories where employees enjoy “good working conditions” (sounds familiar–Ed) the phones use ethically sourced and recycled materials, and it places sustainability at the heart of its operation. It has just announced, for example, that the Fairphone 3, launched in 2019, will see Android 13 and a stated aim of two years of support. It continued to support the Fairphone 2 (which launched in 2015 with Android 5 and was upgraded to Android 10 in 2021, see LXF210 for review) until March 2023, when it received its final update.
The fourth iteration of the Fairphone launched in Europe back in 2021. It’s now available in the US, too, but with a new dimension of fairness. To wit, data fairness. Through a partnership with Murena (see box, right, for the origin story), you can buy the Fairphone 4 with the privacy-friendly /e/OS (trying to outdo Pop!_OS in the awkwardly punctuated OS names rubric). The Murena people respect that “your data is your data” (it says so on the box), and as such they don’t think it’s fair that Google gets so much of it. We should stress this is optional; in Europe at least, you can buy direct from Fairphone with stock Android if you really want.
The Fairphone 4 was a mid-range device when it launched, so if you’re looking for impressive hardware features today, you’re likely to be disappointed. Our digital sibling reviewed it at launch time (see www. techradar.com/reviews/fairphone-4-review) and was impressed at the eco-friendliness of it all, but noted the underwhelming camera performance. We’re more interested in how the device works with /e/OS, but it’s worth restating that you need to tweak camera settings (or get lucky) to get the sort of pictures that come easily to a recent-model iPhone.
Being a modular device makes the Fairphone chunkier than your average phone. With a depth of 10.5mm and weighing in at 225g, you’re going to feel this in your pocket. It feels comfortable in the hand, though. And all that mass gives you the sense it can survive the occasional drop. Anyway, let’s get to the software. The default /e/OS experience is pretty smooth. It has its own custom launcher which looks (and acts) much more like iOS than Android. We’re far more used to the latter, so our early experience included lots of fumbling around
