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Fairphone 3 gets 7 years of updates, besting every other Android OEM
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
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I'm not really conviced by fairphone. They claim they have an ethical and ecological supply chain / manufacturing but there is very little on their website to support that claim. The phone is made in China like any other smartphone. The "Fairtrade Gold" label doesn't mean Gold-rank fairtrade materials, it means that only the actual gold that's inside the phone has the fairtrade label. The amount of gold in a phone is ridiculously small and doesn't represent the major part of the phone's emissions footprint. They have another label which name I can't remember but I looked it up and the terms are very vague. After all the electronic components are still electronic components : copper wires made from copper, qualcomm CPU made in the same qualcomm factory, etc. I don't think a label changes that.
All in all I don't think that buying a brand new, 580 € smartphone with subpar performance is a good move if you care about the environment. Buying a used phone sounds like a much better option to me : cheaper, better performance, probably not as serviceable BUT it's already living a second life anyways.
I tried to be enthusiatic but FP looks way too much like a cash grab aimed at people that care about the environment
You're right that Fairphone's supply chain is not fully sustainable. In fact, I remember reading an interview with the founder where he admitted that poor sustainability and labour practices are so entrenched in the industry that it was impossible to actually make a "fair" Fairphone. (Incidentally, this is why the company uses the word "fair*[er]*" to describe the phones.)
Yeah, I would definitely agree that a used phone is a much more environmentally-friendly choice than a brand-new one. The amount of customers who are going to ditch their 1 or 2 year old phone for this "sustainable" phone will unfortunately not be zero...
My problem with FP isn't only that their phone lacks in features and sustainability. It's that their whole PR and marketing is misleading. They hold back a lot of essential information to trick the customer into thinking that the phone is good for the environment. I would be more enclined to support them if they were honest about it ; right now it looks like corporate BS intended to make a maximal profit, like any other phone company
Phones are never good for environment, it's a resource sink. But it's better than most others and it's enough :-)
A lot of phones are disposed of despite being perfectly functional (at least some are saved by the second hand market) just because the manufacturer released a new version with a slightly better camera sensor and more RAM. It has gotten a bit ridiculous. Fairphones are not perfect, but being able to keep them more than 2-3 years without being left with an unmaintained glued brick is what makes at least a small difference.
i'd be fine with it if they presented it like this. But they don't, they aren't honest about the actual (very moderate) sustainability they offer
They are a European company. If they lied about any of this, an NGO would have already bisected them since then.
They're not literally lying, but presenting the information in a biased way
Greenwashing is the term for something like this.
Greenwashing refers to ecological sustainability claims. Regarding the manufacturing process, Fairphone primarily claims to be more socially sustainable, not environmentally. Their ecological claims are solely based off of their phones extended software support and easier repairability, which is undeniably given.