Most US smartphone buyers gravitate towards popular smartphone brands, including Apple, Samsung, and Google. And while there’s no denying that these companies make exceptional smartphones, they all fall short in the department of repairability.
Break the display, and you are looking at repair costs of upwards of $300. Want to change the battery? It’s going to cost you at least $100, and even if you are ready to pay, you cannot repair it yourself.
Fairphone rightly thinks that’s ridiculous, and it just brought its fix-it-yourself philosophy to the US for the first time.
What makes the Fairphone actually repairable?
A new screen costs just $90, a USB-C port is $20, and a fresh battery will run you $40. But the lower price is not the only point. The big difference is that you can order these parts and repair your phone at home.
There are 12 modular parts you can swap yourself, and the phone holds a perfect 10/10 repairability score from iFixit. Add a 5-year warranty and software support through 2033, and you get a phone built to last, not to be replaced every year.
The Fairphone Gen 6+ launching in the US is a modest update over last year’s Gen 6, and brings a newer Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 chip and double the RAM at 12GB. It’s priced at $650 on Fairphone.com, and works on T-Mobile and AT&T networks.
Why is Fairphone betting on the US market now?
As Wired reports, Fairphone CEO Raymond van Eck sees an opening in a market dominated by two players. “If you look to the US market, it’s heavily duopolistic with very little real consumer choice,” he told Wired. “Americans are exhausted by planned obsolescence, closed-box ecosystems, and expensive yearly upgrades.”
The US hasn’t been kind to outside phone brands, with OnePlus recently pulling out, following HMD, Sony, and others before it. But Fairphone says it’s already talking to carriers and MVNOs to get its phone into more stores.
Nathan Proctor, who leads the US PIRG’s Right to Repair campaign, thinks Fairphone’s US launch could push bigger brands to rethink their approach. “It’s proof that it can be done, if companies wanted to make eminently fixable modular products, they could,” he said.
If you’re tired of babying your phone until the next upgrade cycle, the Fairphone Gen 6+ might be worth a look.
