Fairphone is a Dutch electronics manufacturer that designs and produces smartphones and headphones. It aims to minimise the ethical and environmental impact of its devices by using recycled, fairtrade and conflict-free materials, maintaining fair labour conditions throughout its workforce and suppliers, and enabling users to easily repair their devices through modular design and by providing replacement parts, getting a repair score of 10/10 from iFixit on everything besides the Fairphone True Wireless Earbuds (1st Generation) and Fairphone 1. , the company's most recent smartphone is the Fairphone 6+, a highly modular and easily repairable device for which it plans to provide seven years of Android OS updates and eight years of security patches, as well as a five-year warranty.
Fairphone has been dubbed "the most ethical smartphone in the world", scoring 98 out of 100 possible points by the British magazine Ethical Consumer.
History
Fairphone was founded by Bas van Abel, Tessa Wernink and Miquel Ballester as a social enterprise company in January 2013, having existed as a campaign for two and a half years.
In April 2015, the company became a registered B Corporation.
Since version two, the Fairphone is produced in Suzhou, China, by Hi-P International Limited.
In November 2021, the Fairphone 4 was made available.
As of February 2022, Fairphone had sold around 400,000 devices.
In 2023, a consortium of impact investors led by new shareholders Invest-NL, the ABN AMRO Sustainable Impact Fund, and existing shareholder Quadia, with its Regenero Impact Fund, invested €49 million in Fairphone.
In August 2026, Fairphone made its official debut in the United States with the release of the Fairphone 6+.
Products + List of Fairphone models Name Releasedate SoC CPU GPU Memory(GB) Storage(GB) Display Camera InitialAndroidversion Batterycapacity(mAh) Type Speed(GHz) Cores Type Speed(MHz) Size(inches) PPIresolution (px)type Rear Front Fairphone 1MediaTek MT6589Cortex-A71.24PowerVR SGX544MP286116+up to 64GB4.3256960×540IPS8MP1.3MP4.2.22000 Fairphone 2Qualcomm Snapdragon 801Krait 4002.264Adreno 330578232+up to 2TB54461080×192012MP5MP5.12420 Fairphone 3Qualcomm Snapdragon 632Kryo 250Gold+Silver1.8+1.84+4Adreno 506600464+up to 2TB5.654271080×216012MP8MP93060 Fairphone 3+48MP (12MP output)16MP10 Fairphone 4Qualcomm Snapdragon 750GKryo 570Gold+Silver2.2+1.82+6Adreno 6199506/8128/256+up to 2TB6.34091080×234048MP OIS,48 MP ultrawide,(ToF + colour) sensor 25MP113905 Fairphone 5Qualcomm Snapdragon QCM6490Kryo 670Prime+Gold+Silver2.7+2.4+1.91+3+4Adreno 6438126/8128/256+up to 2TB6.461224×2700OLED 90 Hz50MP OIS,50 MP ultrawide,(ToF + colour) sensor 50MP134200 Fairphone 625 June 2025 Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 Kryo 7s Gen 3Prime+Gold+Silver 2.5+2.4+1.8 1+3+4 Adreno 810 1050 8 256+up to 2TB 6.31 4311116×2484OLED 120 Hz 50MP,13 MP ultrawide 32MP 15 4415Fairphone 6+18 Aug 2026Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 4Kryo 7s Gen 4Prime+Gold+Silver2.7+2.4+1.8940121116×2484LTPO OLED 10-120 Hz16
Corporate affairs
Since the introduction of the Fairphone 3 in 2019, Fairphone has reported steadily increasing annual sales, surpassing 100,000 units sold in both 2022 and 2023. The company’s best-selling year to date was 2025, with 145,259 units sold. In 2024, sales slightly exceeded the company's internal goal of 100,000 units, reaching 103,053 units sold.
Fairphone's revenues grew significantly between 2018 and 2022, rising from €10.8 million in 2018 to a peak of €58.9 million in 2022. However, the company faced a challenging year in 2023, when it recorded negative earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of €14.3 million despite revenues of €54.8 million. In 2024, the company returned to profitability with a positive EBITDA of €1.7 million on revenues of €54.4 million.
+ Fairphone sales, revenue and earnings (2018–2025) Year Units sold Revenue (€) EBITDA (€) 2018 22,623 10,822,000 2019 53,844 19,185,000 2020 94,985 35,930,000 3,732,900 2021 87,936 40,457,000 5,687,000 2022 115,681 58,899,000 4,483,900 2023 100,107 54,723,920 2024 103,053 54,350,254 1,745,838 2025 145,259 73,300,139 165,477
Social impact and competitors The phone is modular, which makes it easily repairable and customisable by the user, in keeping with right to repair principles. According to the company, increasing the lifespan of a phone by two years reduces CO2 emissions by 30%.
The gold and silver in Fairphone 4 has the Fairtrade label, and metals used are said to come from conflict-free mines. The company promises a 5-year warranty period and long-term support for software updating and spare parts. In 2017, Fairphone's co-founder Bas van Abel acknowledged that it was currently impossible to produce a 100% fair phone, suggesting it was more accurate to call his company's phones "fairer".Bas van Abel 'Fingerprints on the Touchscreen', March 2017.
In an interview with Will Georgi, Fairphone co-founder Tessa Wernink mentions:There might be a misconception that as a social enterprise, we don't operate like a "normal" business, but that’s not true. In many ways, most of our choices are the same — we still need to make money and sell phones — but the outcome and the goals are different. Our focus is investing in social innovation, instead of purely technical innovation. When other phone companies design a new phone, they research new technology — we research supply chain improvement.A survey conducted by Franziska Verna Haucke in the Journal of Cleaner Production found: A sustainable lifestyle represents the dominant factor explaining the involvement with the Fairphone. Surprisingly, the findings show that alternative consumption seems to negatively influence the involvement with the Fairphone and social commitment seems to play a minor role in the model. These aspects point to the Fairphone as a technical artifact, centered on a choice for a sustainable lifestyle.Shiftphone is another small mobile telephone manufacturer with a focus on sustainability, who also developed a modular smartphone. The founder of Shiftphone considers that the two companies working in collaboration could have more influence on bigger competitors.
Recognition and certifications
In 2016, Fairphone's co-founder and first CEO Bas van Abel was one of the three recipients of the German Environmental Prize.
The Fairphone 4 was one of the first TCO Certified smartphones, receiving its designation in 2021. However, the company had previously suggested its phones exceeded the TCO Certified criteria; indeed, a 2015 side-by-side comparison conducted by Südwind Association, the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations, and the GoodElectronics Network, found the Fairphone 1 to exceed industry standards on more sustainability and social criteria than even the TCO Certified label.
Fairphone has also received three consecutive annual Platinum ratings from EcoVadis, scoring as high as 88/100 in a rating system that covers four different categories measuring environmental and social metrics. This score placed Fairphone among the top 1% of businesses rated by EcoVadis worldwide.
Operating systems Fairphones can run several operating systems, including CalyxOS, DivestOS, /e/, iodéOS, LineageOS, Ubuntu Touch, and more. Murena, the company associated with the /e/ foundation, also sells Fairphones with /e/ pre-installed and offers a warranty for them. As of July 2026 the official /e/ support for FP3, FP5 and FP6 is based on Android 15, while FP4 remains on Android 14.
See also Ethical consumerism Fair trade Framework Computer Green computing Open-source hardware Shiftphone Phonebloks
Footnotes
References
External links
Official community forum Ubuntu Summit 2023 – Open Source for Sustainable and Long lasting Phones (presentation by Luca Weiss about Fairphone)