Green and speckled green, plus a matt gray: these are the colors of the new Fairphones. Since 2014, the Dutch company has wanted to revolutionize the smartphone market, as a sustainable David against many Goliaths, with fairly produced and made from conflict-free raw materials. Every year around 1.3 billion smartphones are sold worldwide, from Samsung, Apple, Xioami and other major manufacturers. The previous models of the new Fairphone 4 have found around 350,000 buyers in recent years.
Those are rather modest numbers. And compared to conventional smartphones from Asian and American manufacturers, a Fairphone was always relatively expensive for the performance it contained. If you wanted a clear conscience, you had to spend a lot on a rather mediocre mobile phone. That could change with the Fairphone 4, even if the sustainability criteria are still important sales arguments.
The new model should be “electronics waste-neutral”. Company boss Eva Gouwens promised at the presentation that for every Fairphone 4 sold, a smartphone would be overhauled or the same amount of electronic waste would be recycled. The exterior and interior should also be even more sustainable. The back is now made entirely from recycled plastic. And a total of 14 materials now come from fair sources such as recycled tin, fair tungsten from Rwanda and Fairtrade-certified gold and aluminum. In the previous model, only eight of these key materials could be sustainably procured.
Furthermore, Fairphone relies on reparability. The company is now a member of the Right-to-Repair campaign. This initiative aims to enforce that manufacturers of electrical devices are legally obliged to provide spare parts for their devices and customers can have them repaired themselves or in any independent workshop. In the case of the Fairphone 4, this means that the smartphone consists of eight modules that can be replaced with a simple screwdriver in the event of defects. And all spare parts are available in the online shop. In addition, Fairphone grants an above-average guarantee of five years for the 4-series models; however, it does not apply to the lithium-ion battery. But it can also be exchanged.
It looks robust, almost bulky
If you want a high-performance mobile phone in addition to these values, you will get more than its predecessors. It looks robust, almost bulky, almost like an outdoor cell phone. Inside is a Snapdragon 750G processor from Qualcomm. This ensures that the Fairphone 4 supports the fifth generation of mobile communications 5G for the first time. The 6.3-inch Full HD Plus screen is made of so-called gorilla glass, which is particularly break-proof. The new Fairphone also supports dual SIM operation with a physical nano SIM card and an eSIM.
There is also an improved camera with three lenses: the main camera is optically image stabilized, equipped with a laser autofocus and has a resolution of 48 megapixels. There is also a 48 MP ultra-wide and a 25 MP selfie camera. How well they actually photograph, however, could not yet be determined with the test device, since the final software update for the camera will not come until the end of October. The cell phone pictures taken were okay, the performance data suggests good mid-range quality for the final update. The Fairphone 4 comes with the latest Google operating system Android 11, Fairphone guarantees software support until the end of 2025, with upgrades to Android 14 and Android 15 this should be extended until the end of 2027.
The end of October is the official start of sales of the Fairphone 4, the global shortage of chips caused the date to be postponed. The new models are now significantly more expensive than their predecessors: While the Fairphone 3 was still available for 450 euros, the price has now risen to 579 euros. For this you get the version with 6 gigabytes (GB) of RAM and 128 GB of internal memory. The variant with 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of internal storage costs 649 euros.
For this price, however, the developers did without a headphone jack. Because of the long guarantee, on the one hand, they wanted to forego additional sources of error, on the other hand, the device would have become even more expensive. This is not really sustainable for everyone who still owns headphones with cables. But at least the soon-to-be-available Fairphone wireless earbuds are made from 30 percent recycled plastic.