Flick | Fairphone
A new repairable, upgradeable, sustainable smartphone promises a five-year warranty, in a big break from traditional smartphone manufacturers like Samsung and Apple. "A phone's biggest environmental impact comes from making the thing in the first place," the promotional page for the Fairphone 4 reads. "So the longer you keep it, the more sustainable it becomes. Simple."Like previous models, you have the right to repair your Fairphone and its modular design makes it easier than other smartphones to repair and modify. Recently, the Biden administration signalled it would craft rules to prevent companies from using anti competitive power to prevent individuals from repairing their products.Each part of a typical smartphone’s lifecycle, offered by companies like Apple and Google, is incredibly destructive. Intensive resource extraction and industrial production are thanks in large part to child and slave labor, with major tech companies facing a lawsuit in 2019 over profiting from child labor in Congolese cobalt mines. They also create “cancer villages” at sites of extraction, as well as cause higher incidence rates of rare cancers in the factories and assemblies where phones are produced. Fairphone's promotional materials insist that its materials are ethically sourced and conflict-free. "We're working behind the scenes to integrate fairer cobalt and lithium into our batteries and we're the only smartphone manufacturer with Faitrade gold in our supply chain." And in line with Fairphone 3, the company is working with Arima, a Taiwainese assembly partner, to try and continue to continue improving working conditions with bonuses for prioritizing workers rights instead of strict quotas and minimal labor costs.