The Fairphone 5 is headed to Europe and the U.K. later this month, but there are no plans for a release in North America.
Those words stung a little bit when a Fairphone representative said them to me, even though I expected to hear them. More than any other phone maker, Fairphone is the one company I want to support.
The Samsungs and Apples of the world make great products, and there is a reason why so many people buy them. But we shouldn't forget that these companies also don't really care about anything except finding ways to pull money from your pocket and put it into theirs. It's how business usually works.
I feel that Fairphone is different. They make a product I want to buy and don't go about building or marketing it in the same ruthless way other companies do. That's also why they aren't as successful as those other companies.
Others are getting better when it comes to caring about the planet and the poor folks who are involved in getting the raw materials and components that make their products, and that's great. But the road to sustainability and ethically sourced materials is a long one, with companies like Fairphone at the end of it. Fairphone truly seems to care, and I want to support them.
I also really want the products they sell. The Fairphone 5 is more attractive to me than any Galaxy S24 or Pixel 8 that is coming, not because it's more powerful or has more words on a spec sheet. It's because it's the one phone that's actually built to last.
I'm the guy in my neighborhood who can try to fix stuff. If your microwave is acting up or your TV flickers, I'll take a look before you spend money and buy a new one. The same when your phone acts funky or you break the screen.
I don't always find a way to do even simple repairs though. Many of the products we buy were designed so they would be difficult to fix on your own, and phones are the biggest offenders here.
You probably won't be able to swap the battery or replace the screen on the phone in your hand. Not because you can't get the parts or because you can't figure out how to open it up, though. It's because you probably will give up or break something else before you get the damn thing open.
Right-to-repair legislation helps, but not the way we all think it does. These laws are designed to make parts and software needed to fix something available, not to make repairs accessible. It seems like every time a law says a company has to sell you a replacement screen, that same company uses more glue and screws that require special (read expensive) tools to remove.
It's because these companies treat a phone as something disposable. If you spend $1,000 to buy the best Android phone, only to have it break in six months, you're expected to "just buy a new one," and that's bullshit. It's another thing which shows these companies really don't care about you and me.
The Fairphone is different. It's supported until 2031. Let that sink in. It means you'll get software updates when you need them for the next nine years, and when Android 18 comes around, you will see it. Without buying anything else. The next phone you buy probably won't.
I've discussed before the things you have to consider when using a phone that no longer gets software updates, but with the Fairphone 5, you don't have to think about that for a long time.
It also has a real five-year warranty that covers every part unless you've done something stupid and caused it to break. Best of all, you can replace every part of it yourself in your living room with regular tools. There is even a screwdriver in the box.
It was designed so it's easy to open it and swap the battery. You can even swap out the mainboard. And you don't have to be some sort of electronic wizard to do it — regular people like you and me can fix anything that goes wrong with the Fairphone 5 by opening up a web browser, hitting the Fairphone website, and ordering a replacement part that's simple to install.
I understand why it's not coming to North America. A conversation with someone working for a different company once laid it all out for me — unless you can sell millions of phones, you can't make any money selling them in the U.S. and Canada. Phones here are built slightly differently so that they work with our cellular networks, and that means it costs money to make a different product that won't work in the rest of the world.
Since carrier stores only care about Samsung and Apple, not enough people will buy a Fairphone 5 to cover the costs. Even a company like Fairphone can't afford to lose money with every sale, so they just skip selling products here.
None of that means I don't want one, though. I just need a phone that works everywhere, so I'll end up getting something else when I am forced to buy a new phone.
That doesn't mean I have to like it, though.
