The Fairphone 6 is an ethical Android phone that embarrasses its rivals
Are you worried about the environment, workers’ rights and e-waste as much as about your addiction to social media and wasting your time staring at apps? If so, then the Fairphone 6 might be the smartphone for you.
It’s a capable, good-looking device made by a company that says it is committed to producing products in a truly ethical way. Fairphone (also the name of the Dutch company) says it ensures many people involved in its supply chain are paid fairly, with as many components as possible for its products sourced ethically and sustainably.
The Fairphone 6 is its latest release, a £499 modular Android smartphone with replaceable parts, five year warranty and software update support for eight years, a promise that beats that of industry giants Google and Samsung.
I’ve been testing the phone to see whether or not you’re giving up performance levels and camera quality to own a phone from a company with a heightened moral conscience. One of the phone’s most notable unique perks is a mode that instantly switches the Android operating system into a dumbed-down mode designed to present a simpler device.
Without the allure of social media and other distracting apps, it attempts to provide a dumbphone experience that doesn’t force you to give up using a smartphone, handy for when you need access to the digital tools and apps that a real dumbphone would otherwise require you to give up.
This new Moments mode is activated with the fluorescent yellow switch on the side of the phone. It clicks the whole operating system from full Android to a black and white home screen with a list of up to five apps, which you can choose. Of course, you can just click the switch back and access a whole world of distracting apps, but I found it quite effective to turn on while working as a visual reminder not to tap on Instagram.
Apps in the list still open into their full versions, but they are the only five that will be available to you in Moments mode.
The Fairphone 6’s hardware feels modern though the chunky plastic build and screen bezels remind you this isn’t a phone built to feel as premium as the latest iPhone. The payoff is a device that is far less disposable and more repairable than any modern Apple product.
Thanks to removable screws (you’ll need to at least add a screwdriver for £8.66 to your online purchase, some repairs require other tools) you can take off the back panel of the phone and access many of the components to replace them. Fairphone stocks everything on its website for sale from the battery to each individual camera module, USB-C port, loudspeaker and many more. If something breaks, the idea is to fix the phone rather than throw it away or stash it in a drawer.
The Fairphone 6’s hardware feels modern though the chunky plastic build and screen bezels remind you this isn’t a phone built to feel as premium as the latest iPhone.
Fairphone charges £78.27 for a user-replaceable display for the Fairphone 6. Apple charges £289 for you to send your iPhone 16 off for a new screen if you don’t pay for AppleCare+. Apple will charge you the same £289 for the display for you to repair it yourself through a service the company appears to provide as a tickbox exercise to appease regulators and to push customers towards not doing it themselves.
Samsung also charges north of £200 for self-repair screen kits for many of its phones. Fairphone’s parts are far cheaper and the phone is truly user repairable. What you lose in premium build you gain in sustainability.
As well as changes on the inside, the Fairphone 6 also offers optional accessories that attach to the outside. Removing the back plate lets you screw on a card holder or finger loop, plus there’s a lanyard that attaches if you want to sling the phone across you like a bag.
One thing you can’t replace or upgrade is the chipset, which is a Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 from Qualcomm. It is decidedly mid-range in 2025, and after a few performance hiccups in my testing I’m a little concerned about how it’ll hold up over the next eight years. After a software update, I stopped seeing the issue that caused the phone to crawl to a halt, and once even freeze completely. That’s a little concerning, but it has at least been fixed.
Paired with 8GB RAM, this isn’t a phone to buy to play high-end mobile games on but it’ll be more than fine for most apps for most people. Fairphone offering 256GB storage on this £499 phone also puts Apple and Google to shame, both only offering 128GB on the £799 iPhone 16 and £799 Pixel 10.
The phone ships with Android 15, and thanks to the promise of eight years of software support you’ll still get security updates until 2033. Judging by past Fairphone models' updates, I wouldn’t count on that meaning you’ll get eight new Android versions to Android 23, but security patches should keep you safe from digital gremlins.
All phones could be this easily repairable, but a future where the major smartphone makers embrace it still seems like a pipe dream.
The most disappointing aspect of the Fairphone 6 is the cameras, but you might expect this for the price and the other things the firm is focused on. Only the main 50MP camera produced decent shots, and even then I had to wrestle with the focus and brightness when shooting to ensure quality.
A 13MP ultrawide is merely fine, but with no telephoto lens, zooming is a big no, with quality deteriorating as soon as you punch in. If you care deeply about cameras, this isn’t the phone to get.
But if you want a phone that you can be confident you can repair long into the future with a five year warranty that doesn’t compromise on functionality, the Fairphone 6 ticks every box. All phones could be this easily repairable, but a future where the major smartphone makers embrace it seems like a pipe dream.
In a world where we usually don’t think twice before buying a disposable product, it’s reassuring to see a company so committed to producing an ethically minded version of our most personal piece of technology.
Daily Express
