Fairphone, today, opened up pre-orders for its second generation ethical smartphone. The Android-based Fairphone 2 can be pre-ordered in Europe for €529.38 (roughly $575 USD) and is designed with easy of repair at the forefront of its design. Fairphone hopes to sell 15,000 pre-orders and is aiming to ship them by November this year.
Unlike most phones on the market, the Fairphone 2 isn’t really about having the best specifications or performance. Rather, it’s about changing the industry. Fairphone seeks to create an ethical product that improves worker welfare in its assembly plants and tries — as much as it can — to only source components and materials ethically. It uses conflict-free tin and tantalum in its parts and openly maps its supply chain for all of us to read through.
What’s more, the Fairphone 2 is modular. It’s designed so that anyone can open and repair the device for themselves with little experience or technical knowledge. The company will even sell spare parts to customers when things go wrong. You’ll also be able to upgrade parts in the future.
If you’re curious about specs, you’ll be glad to know the Fairphone sounds like a pretty decent handset. It has a 5-inch full HD (446ppi) display with 0.7mm thick Gorilla Glass 3 on the front. A quad-core Snapdragon 801 chip keeps things ticking over along with 2GB RAM and 32GB inbuilt storage. Its main camera boasts 8MP, while the front facing sensor is 2MP. A 2,420mAh Lithium-Ion battery finishes of the main spec list.
You can pre-order the phone (Europe only) from Fairphone.com from today.
