Bram Lodewijks casts a meticulous and moral eye over the latest ethical phone.
SPECS
SoC: Qualcomm QCM6490 EL, 64-bit Clock: 8-core, 4x silver 1.9GHz, 3x gold 2.4GHz, 1x prime 2.7GHz GPU: Adreno 643L 812MHz Mem: 8GB Screen: 6.5- inch 90Hz OLED, 1,224x 2,700, 880 nits, Gorilla Glass 5 Storage: 256GB, up to 2TB microSD Cameras: Main 50MP Sony IMX 800 OIS + EIS, UW 50MP Sony IMX 858 EIS; Front 50MP Samsung JN1 EIS Video: 4k 30fps, 1080p 120fps, 720p 240fps Comms: 4/5G (nano SIM+ eSIM), Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2 LE, NFC, USB-C 3 OTG Sensors: Facial, fingerprint, magnet, cccel, gyro, compass, light, proximity Location: GPS/ AGPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo Battery: 30W QC3 4,200mAh removable OS: Android 13 Warranty: Five years, IP55, MIL-810H Size: 76x9.6x 162mm, 212g
While every other smartphone manufacturer bombards us with numerous new models W every year, Fairphone plays differently. It has been more than eight years since we looked at the Fairphone 2 (LXF210), and this ties in with the Dutch company’s overall sustainable approach: it wants to get rid of the culture in which you replace your smartphone every year.
The new Fairphone 5 continues the company’s sustainable strategy. You are guaranteed to receive five Android updates and eight years of security updates, and Fairphone hopes to extend this to 10 years of updates. And where the Fairphone 4 had eight separate parts that could be replaced by an end user, the improved modular design now includes 10 parts that you can swap out and substitute with a replacement..
That’s all great, but for the Fairphone 5 to be a success, it must still meet people’s expectations for speed and quality. Especially when it costs £649 for the one model with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage; naturally, you can expand the internal storage with a microSD card, up to 2TB.
A modular approach
The most important aspect of the Fairphone 5’s design, of course, is that it’s modular. Nothing beats the nostalgic feeling of the plastic back that you can take off via the simple process of slipping your fingernail under a small recess at the back. The back is firmly fixed, though, and even if you drop the phone – which happened during testing – everything remains stuck. After that fall, there was no scratch to be seen on the screen, which is protected by Gorilla Glass 5.
This modular approach leads to a chunky design compared to normal phones. Fairphone has scraped off a couple of millimetres compared to the 4, but you will notice its 9.6mm thickness. Still, it fits well in the hand and a plastic back means it doesn’t slip on smooth surfaces such as a glass table. The right-hand side still holds the power button with a built-in fingerprint scanner, but this works significantly better than on the Fairphone 4.
You might think that a smartphone with
