A non-Big-Tech smartphone that’s easy to repair and where the parts are easy to replace

Fairphone, whose makers are a Netherlands-based social enterprise, are about to release a new, fourth generation of their smartphone.

The company behind Fairphone aims to compete in the mobile niche left by the overwhelming Google and Apple duopoly, and the main selling point is to allow customers access to what it calls "fairer electronics" that take into account a wide range of considerations such as ethical sourcing, sustainable materials, manufacturing and (prolonged) life cycle and, essentially, the right to repair.

Like many other alternative mobile devices that focus on what's often falling by the wayside in the modern consumerist mind - such as open source- based phones whose main goal is to improve security and privacy - previous iterations of Fairphone are said to have suffered from having to use low-end or outdated specs, making the phones less appealing to a vast majority of people right out the gate, despite their real world usefulness, or high moral ground.

The reviews of Fairphone 4, however, now speak about a device, slated for launch later this month, that, while maintaining its signature modular design, also manages to integrate more up to-date and powerful components, as well as offer a Fairphone 4 that is competitive with mid-range Android handsets - along a 5 year warranty and two major Android updates through the year 2025, with ambition to extend this for another two years.

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