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00:00Hey, what's up, MKBHD here.
00:01And this, this is not a normal phone.
00:06So, you know, they say the best way to act is
00:12if everyone else acted like you,
00:14then the world would be great.
00:15To be the change you want to see in the world, right?
00:17So in this world of constant e-waste
00:19and this fight for better, more repairable gadgets,
00:23this is called the Fairphone 4
00:25and it's aiming to do exactly that.
00:27So at first glance, it's a pretty basic looking phone.
00:30It's 579 euros or about $650.
00:33And that gets you a clean, basic design,
00:36flat front and back, curves at the corners,
00:39a little on the big side,
00:40but nothing we haven't seen before.
00:41That's a 6.3 inch 1080p display up front,
00:45a metal frame, a fingerprint sensor on the power button
00:48and USB-C at the bottom.
00:49And it has 5G, which previous Fairphones didn't have.
00:52Looks pretty good.
00:53But that's, that's just at first glance.
00:55This phone is designed from the ground up
00:57to be sustainable, modular, repairable
01:02and upgradable by you.
01:05That is very unlike any other phone out right now.
01:07So how do they do it?
01:09Well, you start with the basics.
01:10You saw the packaging,
01:11which is recycled paper and cardboard printed with soy ink.
01:15So this packaging is entirely sustainable.
01:17Then the phone itself is pretty easy to get into for anyone,
01:20not just professionals, anyone.
01:23So you get into this notch down here,
01:25built into the corner of the phone.
01:26And that lets you pull off the soft touch,
01:29fully recycled plastic back cover.
01:31And that lets you get into all the parts of this phone.
01:33So the 3,900 milliamp hour battery,
01:35that can be easily popped out, replaced,
01:38just like the good old days.
01:39And then the rest of the pieces are all easily accessible
01:42by just 12 screws.
01:43So you just need a little Phillips screwdriver
01:45to jump right in.
01:46And then each of the parts pops right out
01:49like a puzzle piece.
01:50So it isn't necessarily individual components,
01:52but the camera and speaker housing up here at the top
01:55can be removed and replaced pretty easily.
01:58If you take off the bottom,
01:59you can replace your speaker module for a new one.
02:01I literally just popped a ribbon cable off
02:03and was able to remove just the USB type C port
02:07from this phone.
02:08So if your port breaks or gets loose,
02:10you don't have to replace all of the inside of your phone.
02:13You don't have to pay someone an exorbitant amount of money.
02:15You don't have to throw it all out and buy a whole new phone.
02:18You just head over to Fairphone's website
02:20and scroll through the list of modules and pieces
02:22that they sell and buy exactly which one you need.
02:26Then when you get it,
02:26you take the phone apart pretty quickly and easily
02:29and can replace it.
02:30So like I said, it's not like other phones.
02:33You know, these days in a normal smartphone,
02:34if one little part breaks,
02:36typically that's, you know, you have very limited options
02:39where Fairphone envisions a future
02:41where anyone can identify something broken
02:43or something they want to upgrade
02:45and just do it themselves.
02:46So that'll include your battery,
02:49your rear facing camera,
02:50your front facing camera,
02:52your speaker, your earpiece,
02:54your USB port, and of course your display.
02:56The whole front, the display is easily removable
02:59with a single ribbon cable.
03:00And that replacement to the user is 80 euros.
03:03And honestly, very easy to do yourself,
03:05unlike pretty much every other smartphone.
03:07This phone scores a 10 out of 10 repair score
03:09from iFixit.
03:10There's no glue, no complex screws,
03:13nothing to make it unnecessarily difficult to take apart.
03:16And it comes with a five-year warranty,
03:19including a promise to support the phone
03:21and sell the spare parts
03:22for five years after the phone comes out.
03:25It's a dream.
03:25So I am a huge fan of this vision,
03:28but it's worth noting, it's not perfect, right?
03:31This is where the inner instinct
03:33to review everything comes out for me.
03:34Like if you were to buy this 650-ish dollar phone,
03:40there are some obvious trade-offs.
03:42So let's just, for the sake of example,
03:43take the Fairphone up against,
03:45if you're gonna buy a phone,
03:46something else of similar price,
03:48like Pixel 6.
03:49So for one, the Fairphone,
03:50Fairphone is a thick phone with about three Cs, right?
03:54So it's a little bit thicker and heavier than a Pixel,
03:56but just enough where it's not bad,
03:58but you can tell the difference in the hand.
04:00And the specs and performance are just on different levels.
04:03So the Pixel's Tensor chip feels roughly equivalent
04:06to a high-end Snapdragon 8 series,
04:08maybe a triple 8 or an 865.
04:11The Fairphone has solid specs,
04:13but definitely closer to mid-range.
04:15Snapdragon 750G and six or eight gigs of RAM
04:19with 128 or 256 gigs of storage.
04:22That incredible removable battery that I talked about,
04:24it is 3,900 milliamp hours,
04:27but that is smaller than the 4,600
04:29that they fit into the Pixel 6.
04:30And then the display,
04:31while it's pretty big and bright
04:33and covered in Gorilla Glass 5,
04:35it would also be a relatively weak point
04:37in a phone in this range at 1080p, 60 Hertz LCD.
04:41Phones like the Pixel 6 would get you a larger,
04:44brighter, higher refresh rate display
04:47that gets much closer to the edges and is OLED
04:49with all the color and feature benefits that come with that.
04:53And then of course,
04:53we all know about the Pixel and its new cameras.
04:55The Fairphone does have a 48 megapixel main camera
04:59and a 48 megapixel ultra wide
05:01and a time of flight sensor in this array back here,
05:04but they're acceptable.
05:06It looks kind of like a Moto G or a Samsung A series phone
05:10where they'll give you passable photos in decent light,
05:13but as soon as the conditions get tough,
05:15they kind of fall apart.
05:16There is also a slightly lesser IP54 splash resistance rating
05:21for this phone,
05:21which is actually kind of amazing
05:23for a phone built like this,
05:24but that is less than the IP68,
05:26the full submersion protection for the Pixel.
05:29There's also no wireless charging.
05:31The point is, you know,
05:32these two phones are pretty similar functionally.
05:34They're both Android phones,
05:36but as a customer choosing to buy one,
05:39you'd have to really value the repairability
05:42and the sustainability offered by the Fairphone
05:44to pick it over the Pixel
05:47or really any other phones in this range.
05:49Now, part of that is because it's hard to do
05:51all of those things in a super tightly built gadget
05:54and do all of the repairability
05:56and modularity on top of that,
05:58but also the other part is,
05:59is a small company that doesn't have the same resources
06:02to make an incredible world-class bleeding edge phone
06:05that's tightly packed
06:07and keep the sustainability stuff in their supply chain
06:10and keep the price competitive.
06:12Here's my take.
06:13There is no such thing
06:15as a 100% sustainable phone like this.
06:21If you go back far enough,
06:22you'll find things eventually that are imperfect.
06:25There is no perfect sustainable smartphone,
06:28but the Fairphone represents the furthest
06:31anyone has ever gone by far.
06:34There's a lot of different materials
06:35that go into building a smartphone,
06:37plastic, glass, aluminum, nickel, copper.
06:41Fairphone goes the extra mile
06:43to source those build materials fairly and responsibly,
06:46which definitely costs more.
06:48So the back cover of this phone, like I mentioned,
06:50is made from 100% recycled plastic
06:53and over 50% of the plastic inside this phone
06:56is post-consumer recycled.
06:57Then the aluminum rails come from an ASI certified vendor,
07:00meaning worker health and safety are protected
07:03and no child labor is used.
07:05And even for other mined materials,
07:06like tin and tungsten and the lithium in the batteries,
07:10they make sure to invest in sustainable sources
07:12or use mines that have been assessed by IRMA,
07:15the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance.
07:17But even so, the world still has a cobalt shortage today,
07:20so mining it at all is not ideal.
07:23We really should be recycling it way more than we do,
07:25but a ton of the world's cobalt is sitting in drawers.
07:28There's apparently 300 million phones
07:31just sitting, hibernating in drawers right now,
07:33doing nothing.
07:35In just Germany and France,
07:37imagine how much that scales up for the entire world.
07:40And then of course you can go even further and further back,
07:43like I can already see the YouTube comments,
07:44like, well, what about the computers they're using
07:47to design these?
07:48Are those sustainable?
07:49What about the buildings that they operate out of?
07:51Was there solar panels on the roof of the studio
07:53they shot their commercials in?
07:55Like nothing is 100% perfectly, wholly sustainable.
07:59And even Fairphone could do better.
08:01There is no charger in the box in the Pixel 6
08:05and a lot of other phones in that price range.
08:06And there's also no charger in the box for the Fairphone.
08:09But like I said, Fairphone is setting the bar
08:11by going farther than anybody else.
08:14And even in the case that they're not perfect,
08:16Fairphone, the company, is pledging their entire company
08:18to be e-waste neutral,
08:20meaning for every phone they put out into the market,
08:22they collect an equal amount of e-waste.
08:25That explains the slot in the packaging
08:26where you can drop your current device
08:28and send it back to them to be recycled.
08:30This is the most sustainable phone in the world.
08:34And it's a real phone that you can buy.
08:37I mean, kinda, it's only available in Europe.
08:39So to get it to the US, I had to import it, but it's real.
08:42It's a real phone, so it can be done.
08:45So the real question is, this is one,
08:47can other phones be this sustainable too?
08:51Yes and no.
08:52So one curious thing that was mentioned
08:54in Fairphone's official video when I was on their site
08:56is that they have to,
08:57in order to offer these five years of replacement parts,
09:00they have to maintain a good relationship
09:02with those parts vendors and their suppliers.
09:05And so they can't use too extreme
09:08or too low supply versions of parts.
09:10They need to use mostly average parts.
09:14So the phone has to be an average size
09:16and use mostly average specs.
09:17Like basically Fairphone, the company,
09:19isn't big enough to be designing every single thing inside,
09:23their own silicon, their own image sensors,
09:25their own displays.
09:26So they're bound by those suppliers
09:28and what they can continually supply.
09:30But even for the others, these mega companies out there
09:32who don't have those same bounds,
09:35we are often rewarding the phones out there
09:38that are pushing the limits that are actually unique
09:42and that are different for a change.
09:44That is by definition, the opposite of average.
09:48That is the opposite of sustainable.
09:50But I still think there's room for these other companies
09:53to take parts of what Fairphone is doing.
09:57Things like not using a ton of glue
09:59and not using a bunch of different complex screws
10:02and just making their parts in general,
10:04a bit more accessible and more repairable
10:07and thus a bit more sustainable.
10:09So look, I don't think Fairphone is ever expecting
10:11to be a leader, a global leader in smartphone sales.
10:14Like they're never gonna pass Apple or Samsung
10:17or Huawei or anything like that.
10:18But what they are doing is proving
10:21that there are real ways for smartphone companies
10:24to do better, for all of those companies
10:26to have better practices.
10:27And even small changes from those companies
10:30can make a big difference.
10:31So from here on out, I want to make a pledge
10:33to include some section in all of my future
10:36smartphone reviews on repairability and sustainability,
10:40just to shine a light on that
10:41and give those companies a reason,
10:44a reward to make those compromises.
10:46And as for you and I, we can do a much better job
10:50of recycling our old electronics.
10:53So do you have a smartphone sitting in a drawer,
10:56unused, gathering dust?
10:59Recycle it.
11:01Anyway, we only have one earth, hot take,
11:03we should be taking better care of it.
11:05That's about it for this video.
11:06Thanks for watching.
11:08Catch you guys on the next one.
11:09Peace.
11:10I'll see you next time.
11:12Bye.
11:13Bye.