Nearly impossible? How Fairphone built the ethical, repairable Fairphone Gen 6+
Fairphone's CTO discusses the design philosophy behind the Gen 6+ smartphone, which prioritizes modularity and repairability. The company aims to challenge the industry standard of disposable, glue-heavy hardware by making the device fully user-serviceable.
Why it matters
This represents a growing movement toward sustainable consumer electronics and the 'right to repair,' challenging the planned obsolescence model of major tech giants.
Unscrewed Nearly impossible? How Fairphone built the ethical, repairable Fairphone Gen 6+. Fairphone’s CTO explains how and why the Dutch company builds a different kind of smartphone.
32 You can fully disassemble the Fairphone Gen 6+ in about 20 minutes. Credit: Ryan Whitwam You can fully disassemble the Fairphone Gen 6+ in about 20 minutes. Credit: Ryan Whitwam Text settings Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only Learn more Minimize to nav Smartphone longevity didn’t used to matter. In the past, before you could wear out or break a phone, there was always some shiny new thing to buy. Today, we expect our smartphones to go the distance, but they’ve also become less repairable and, in many cases, more fragile. Fairphone, a Dutch smartphone maker that has just entered the US market, thinks about phones differently.
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