The “Fairphone,” a phone that purports to approach smartphone design in the most ethical way possible from every conceivable angle, opened for preorders last Friday. The phone uses only conflict-free resources wherever possible, it has an open design, and it is marketed in a transparent way to customers.
The way many gadgets are made—smartphones and tablets especially—has been called into question by several investigations into supply chains and sources, in particular those of Apple and its Foxconn factories. According to a New York Times report last year, suppliers put out phones hand-assembled by allegedly underage, often underpaid workers operating in unsafe conditions.
The company making the Fairphone purports to be ultra-transparent about its material sourcing and manufacturing process, getting conflict-free materials wherever possible and highlighting unfair practices with a view toward changing them. The phone will feature a Mediatek 6589 quad-core CPU, 4.3-inch qHD display, 8-megapixel camera, 16GB storage, dual-band SIM (GSM850/900/1800/1900MHZ, WCDMA 900/2100MHz), user-replaceable battery, and microSD card slot. It will run Android 4.2 Jelly Bean with a “special interface developed by Kwame Corporation,” which the company notes is “also open.”
While we are a bit skeptical that a small company looking to assemble and ship 5,000 phones will be able to have much impact on the gargantuan gadget supply chains in place, the desire to give users as much control over hardware and software as possible is something to be welcomed. The phone will initially be available only in Europe, priced at a flat €325 ($418). Production will begin once 5,000 preorders are in place, with shipments to begin in the fall.
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