The Fairphone 3 and 3+ are

touchscreen A touchscreen or touch screen is the assembly of both an input ('touch panel') and output ('display') device. The touch panel is normally layered on the top of an electronic visual display of an information processing system. The display is often ...

-based

smartphones A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, which ...

made by

Fairphone Fairphone is a Dutch electronics manufacturer that designs and produces smartphones with the goal of having a lower environmental footprint and better social impact than is common in the industry. In particular, the company aims to minimize the ...

. The phone has a

modular Broadly speaking, modularity is the degree to which a system's components may be separated and recombined, often with the benefit of flexibility and variety in use. The concept of modularity is used primarily to reduce complexity by breaking a sy ...

, repairable design and is "constructed out of responsibly-sourced, conflict-free, and recycled materials where possible". It went on sale on September 3rd, 2019. It comes with Android 9 "Pie" installed. The phone has a FullHD+ screen (2160 × 1080 pixels) with

Gorilla Glass Gorilla Glass is a brand of chemically strengthened glass developed and manufactured by Corning, now in its seventh generation. Designed to be thin, light and damage-resistant, the glass gains its surface strength, ability to contain flaws, and c ...

, 12 MP rear camera, 3,000 mAh battery, 64 GB storage with microSD,

Qualcomm Snapdragon Snapdragon is a suite of system on a chip (SoC) semiconductor products for mobile devices designed and marketed by Qualcomm Technologies Inc. The Snapdragon's central processing unit (CPU) uses the ARM architecture. A single SoC may include mu ...

632 processor, 4 GB RAM, 8 MP front camera (16 MP on Fairphone 3+),

NFC NFC may refer to: Psychology * Need for cognition, in psychology * Need for closure, social psychological term Sports * NFC Championship Game, the National Football Conference Championship Game * NCAA Football Championship (Philippines) * Nati ...

and

dual SIM Some mobile phones support use of two SIM cards, described as dual SIM operation. When a second SIM card is installed, the phone either allows users to switch between two separate mobile network services manually, has hardware support for keeping ...

. At launch the Fairphone 3 retailed at £408. The Fairphone 3+, launched in August 2020, has upgraded front and rear cameras and speaker module. The cameras modules are compatible with the FP3. The improved audio largely comes from the new core module in the FP3+ and is not upgradable as this is IEMI related. The Fairphone 3+ shipped with

Android 10 Android 10 ( codenamed Android Q during development) is the tenth major release and the 17th version of the Android mobile operating system. It was first released as a developer preview on March 13, 2019, and was released publicly on Septembe ...

and an increase in the amount of recycled plastic it contains, now 40%.

Ethical manufacturing and sustainable materials

Fairphone 3 "has been manufactured in a factory that pays the local

living wage A living wage is defined as the minimum income necessary for a worker to meet their basic needs. This is not the same as a subsistence wage, which refers to a biological minimum, or a solidarity wage, which refers to a minimum wage tracking labor ...

". "The tin and tungsten used in its construction is conflict free, the gold is

Fairtrade A fair trade certification is a product certification within the market-based movement fair trade. The most widely used fair trade certification is FLO International's, the International Fairtrade Certification Mark, used in Europe, Africa, As ...

, and the copper and plastics are recycled."

Modular design

The phone's modular design—it is constructed out of seven modules—makes it easier to repair than most smartphones. The rear of the phone can be removed without using tools. Having removed the rear, the battery can be lifted out and replaced. Using a regular Phillips #00 screwdriver, the display is easily removed and the modules are held in using only

press fit An interference fit, also known as a pressed fit or friction fit is a form of fastening between two ''tight'' fitting mating parts that produces a joint which is held together by friction after the parts are pushed together. Depending on the am ...

sockets. The

motherboard A motherboard (also called mainboard, main circuit board, mb, mboard, backplane board, base board, system board, logic board (only in Apple computers) or mobo) is the main printed circuit board (PCB) in general-purpose computers and other expand ...

, containing the

system on a chip A system on a chip or system-on-chip (SoC ; pl. ''SoCs'' ) is an integrated circuit that integrates most or all components of a computer or other electronic system. These components almost always include a central processing unit (CPU), memory ...

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to: Animals * A male sheep * Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish People * Ram (given name) * Ram (surname) * Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director * RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch * ...

and storage, can also be easily removed but the motherboard's individual components can not be easily replaced.

Reception

Sophie Charara, writing in ''

Wired ''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San Fra ...

'', said that the phone's technical specification is "almost identical to the

Moto G7 Moto G7 (stylized by Motorola as moto g7) is a series of Android smartphones developed by Motorola Mobility, a subsidiary of Lenovo. It is the seventh generation of the Moto G family and was first released on 7 February 2019. As with the las ...

, our current recommendation for the best budget phone." She considered it "important" that "the premium for choosing an ethical phone had dropped to below £200" "for the first time". iFixit gave it a 10 out of 10 repairability score, 10 is easiest to repair.

Fairphone 3+

The Fairphone 3+ was launched in August 2020. It has upgraded front and rear cameras, improved audio, an increase in the amount of recycled plastic it contains (40% rather than 9%) and

. The rear camera has a larger sensor, intelligent scene detection and a higher

dynamic range Dynamic range (abbreviated DR, DNR, or DYR) is the ratio between the largest and smallest values that a certain quantity can assume. It is often used in the context of signals, like sound and light. It is measured either as a ratio or as a base-1 ...

. The front camera has a bigger sensor and a higher dynamic range. The new cameras and speaker are alternatively available as modules that can be swapped in the original Fairphone 3. The audio improvements cannot be achieved purely by a speaker module upgrade. The speaker module is only for the rear/side speaker and output is only improved if the new core module for the FP3+ is used.

Fair trade: wages

Building on its Worker Welfare Fund, Fairphone is in the process of rolling out bonus pay to Taiwan-based Arima's factory of 500 workers in Suzhou, China where Fairphone's devices are manufactured. The bonus will be paid to bring wages up to living wages and while initially it was going to be paid only to workers on the Fairphone line, after discussions with workers and management "they indicated that it's a better idea to spread the bonus over the whole company to avoid tensions." There's also a second bonus fund, which takes the form of a "higher product price to Arima" for making progress on working conditions and worker satisfaction.

References

External links

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Fairphone 3 Teardown
by iFixit {{Portal bar, Telecommunication Fair trade brands Android (operating system) devices Modular smartphones Mobile phones with user-replaceable battery Mobile phones introduced in 2019 Smartphones