hey what's up mkbhd here and this
this is not a normal phone
[Music]
so you know they say the best way to act
is if everyone else acted like you then
the world would be great to be the
change you want to see in the world
right so in this world of constant
e-waste and this fight for better more
repairable gadgets
this is called the fairphone 4 and it's
aiming to do exactly that so at first
glance it's a pretty basic looking phone
it's 579 euros or about 650 dollars and
that gets you a clean basic design flat
front and back curves at the corners a
little on the big side but nothing we
haven't seen before that's a 6.3 inch
1080p display up front a metal frame a
fingerprint sensor on the power button
and usbc at the bottom and it has 5g
which previous earphones didn't have
looks pretty good but that's that's just
at first glance this phone is designed
from the ground up to be sustainable
modular
repairable and upgradable
by you
that is very unlike any other phone out
right now so how do they do it well you
start with the basics you saw the
packaging which is recycled paper and
cardboard printed with soy ink so this
packaging is entirely sustainable then
the phone itself is pretty easy to get
into for anyone not just professionals
anyone so you get into this notch down
here built into the corner of the phone
and that lets you pull off the soft
touch fully recycled plastic back cover
and that lets you get into all the parts
of this phone so the 3 900 milliamp hour
battery that can be easily popped out
replaced just like the good old days and
then the rest of the pieces are all
easily accessible by just 12 screws so
you just need a little phillips
screwdriver to jump right in and then
each of the parts
pops right out like a puzzle piece so it
isn't necessarily individual components
but the camera and speaker housing up
here at the top can be removed and
replaced pretty easily if you take off
the bottom you can replace your speaker
module for a new one i literally just
popped a ribbon cable off and was able
to remove just the usb type-c port from
this phone so if your port breaks or
gets loose you don't have to replace all
of the inside of your phone you don't
have to pay someone an exorbitant amount
of money you don't have to throw it all
out and buy a whole new phone you just
head over to fairphone's website and
scroll through the list of modules and
pieces that they sell and buy exactly
which one you need then when you get it
you take the phone apart pretty quickly
and easily and can replace it so like i
said it's not like other phones you know
these days in a normal smartphone if one
little part breaks typically that's you
know you have very limited options where
fairphone envisions a future where
anyone can identify something broken or
something they want to upgrade and just
do it themselves so that'll include your
battery your rear-facing camera your
front-facing camera your speaker your
earpiece your usb port and of course
your display the whole front the display
is easily removable with a single ribbon
cable and that replacement to the user
is 80 euros and honestly very easy to do
yourself unlike pretty much every other
smartphone this one scores a 10 out of
10 repair score from ifixit there's no
glue no complex screws nothing to make
it unnecessarily difficult to take apart
and it comes with a five year warranty
including a promise to support the phone
and sell the spare parts for five years
after the phone comes out it's a dream
so i am a huge fan of this vision but
it's worth noting it's not perfect right
this is where the inner instinct to
review everything comes out for me like
if you were to buy
this
650-ish dollar phone
there are some obvious trade-offs so
let's just for the sake of example take
the fair phone up against if you're
gonna buy a phone something else of
similar price like pixel six so for one
the fairphone the fairphone is a thick
phone with about three c's right so it's
a little bit thicker and heavier than a
pixel but just enough where it's not bad
but you can tell the difference in the
hand and the specs and performance are
just on different levels so the pixel's
tensor chip feels roughly equivalent to
a high-end snapdragon 8 series maybe a
triple eight or an 865 the fair phone
has solid specs but definitely closer to
mid-range snapdragon 750 g and six or
eight gigs of ram with 128 or 256 gigs
of storage that incredible removable
battery that i talked about it is 3 900
milliamp hours but that is smaller than
the 4600 that they fit into the pixel 6
and then the display while it's pretty
big and bright and covered in gorilla
glass 5 it would also be a relatively
weak point in a phone in this range at
1080p 60hz lcd phones like the pixel 6
would get you a larger brighter higher
refresh rate display that gets much
closer to the edges and is oled with all
the color and feature benefits that come
with that and then of course we all know
about the pixel and its new cameras the
fairphone does have a 48 megapixel main
camera and a 48 megapixel ultra wide and
a time of flight sensor in this array
back here but they're they're acceptable
it looks kind of like a moto g or a
samsung a series phone where they'll
give you passable photos in decent light
but as soon as the conditions get tough
they kind of fall apart there is also a
slightly lesser ip54
splash resistance rating for this phone
which is actually kind of amazing for a
phone built like this but that is less
than the ip68 the full submersion
protection for the pixel there's also no
wireless charging the point is you know
these two phones are pretty similar
functionally they're both android phones
but as a customer choosing to buy one
you'd have to really value
the repair ability and the
sustainability offered by the fairphone
to pick it over
the pixel or really any other phones in
this range now part of that is because
it's hard to do all those things in a
super tightly built gadget and do all
the repairability and modularity on top
of that but also the other part is is a
small company that doesn't have the same
resources to make an incredible
world-class bleeding-edge phone that's
tightly packed and keep the
sustainability stuff in their supply
chain
and keep the price competitive so here's
my take
there is
no such thing as a 100 percent
sustainable
phone like this like if you go back far
enough you'll find things eventually
that are imperfect so there is no
perfect sustainable smartphone but the
fair phone represents the furthest
anyone has ever gone by far there's a
lot of different materials that go into
building a smartphone plastic glass
aluminum nickel copper fairphone goes
the extra mile to source those build
materials fairly and responsibly which
definitely costs more so the back cover
of this phone like i mentioned is made
from 100 recycled plastic and over 50
percent of the plastic inside this phone
is post-consumer recycled then the
aluminum rails come from an asi
certified vendor meaning worker health
and safety are protected and no child
labor is used and even for other mined
materials like tin and tungsten and the
lithium in the batteries they make sure
to invest in sustainable sources or use
mines that have been assessed by irma
the initiative for responsible mining
assurance but even so the world still
has a cobalt shortage today so mining it
at all is not ideal we really should be
recycling it way more than we do but a
ton of the world's cobalt is sitting in
drawers there's apparently 300 million
phones just sitting hibernating in
drawers right now doing nothing
in just germany and france
imagine how much that scales up for the
entire world and then of course you can
go even further and further back like i
can already see the youtube comments
like well what about the computers
they're using to design these are those
sustainable what about the buildings
that they operate out of was there solar
panels on the roof of the studio they
shot their commercials in like nothing
is a hundred
perfectly wholly sustainable and even
fairphone could do better there is no
charger in the box in the pixel 6 and a
lot of other phones in that price range
and there's also no charger in the box
for the fairphone but like i said
fairphone is setting the bar by going
farther than anybody else and even in
the case that they're not perfect
fairphone the company is pledging their
entire company to be e-waste neutral
meaning for every phone they put out
into the market they collect an equal
amount of e-waste that explains the slot
in the packaging where you can drop your
current device and send it back to them
to be recycled this is the most
sustainable phone in the world
and it's a real phone that you can buy
and kinda it's only available in europe
so to get it to the us i had to import
it but it's real it's a real phone so it
can be done so the real question is this
is one
can other phones be this sustainable too
yes and no so one curious thing that was
mentioned in fairphone's official video
when i was on their site is that they
have to in order to offer these five
years of replacement parts they have to
maintain a good relationship with those
parts vendors and their suppliers and so
they can't use two extreme or two low
supply versions of parts they need to
use mostly average parts so the phone
has to be an average size and use mostly
average specs like basically fairphone
the company isn't big enough to be
designing every single thing inside
their own silicon their own image
sensors their own displays so they're
bound by those suppliers and what they
can continually supply but even for the
others these mega companies out there
who don't have those same bounds
we are often rewarding the phones out
there that are
pushing the limits that are actually
unique and that are different for a
change
that is by definition the opposite of
average that is the opposite of
sustainable but i still think there's
room
for these other companies to take parts
of what fairphone is doing things like
not using a ton of glue and not using a
bunch of different complex screws and
just making their parts in general a bit
more accessible and more repairable and
thus a bit more sustainable so look i
don't think fairphone is ever expecting
to be a leader a global leader in
smartphone sales like they're never
going to pass apple or samsung or huawei
or anything like that but what they are
doing is proving that there are real
ways for smartphone companies to do
better for all of those companies to
have better practices and even small
changes from those companies can make a
big difference so from here on out i
want to make a pledge to include some
section in all of my future smartphone
reviews on repairability and
sustainability just to shine a light on
that and give those companies a reason
a reward to make those compromises and
as for you and i
we can do a much better job of recycling
our old electronics so uh do you have a
smartphone sitting in a drawer unused
gathering dust
recycle it
anyway we only have one earth hot take
we should be taking better care of it
that's about it for this video thanks
for watching
catch you guys in the next one
peace
you