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Slashdot: Fairphone's Latest Sustainable Smartphone Comes With a Five-Year Warranty

Fairphone's Latest Sustainable Smartphone Comes With a Five-Year Warranty
Published on October 01, 2021 at 06:15AM
New submitter thegreatnick writes: The next generation of Fairphone -- an attempt to make an ethical smartphone -- has been announced with the Fairphone 4. The base specs include a Qualcomm Snapdragon 750G SoC, 6GB of RAM, and 128GB of storage (upgradeable to 8GB and 256GB). On the front, you'll get a 6.3-inch, 2340x1080 LCD display with slimmer bezels (compared to the Fairphone 3 design) and a teardrop notch for the 25-megapixel front camera. The 3,905mAh battery is Qualcomm Quick Charge 4.1 compatible, so if you have a compatible USB-C charger (not included in the box to reduce waste) you can take the battery from 0-50% in 30 minutes. The phone ships with Android 11 and has a side-mounted fingerprint reader in the power button, a MicroSD slot, and the option for dual-SIM usage via one physical nanoSIM and an eSIM. Continuing Fairphone's progress in making a "fair" supply chain -- both ethically-clean raw materials and paying workers a fair wage -- it also describes the 4 as "e-waste neutral." This is a neat way of summing up the idea that the company will recycle one device for every Fairphone 4 it sells. In addition, Fairphone can boast that it now uses 70% "fair" materials inside the handset, including FairTrade Gold and Silver, aluminum from ASI-certified vendors, and a backplate made from 100% post-consumer recycled polycarbonate. In an upgrade to previous models, the Fairphone 4 has dual cameras, though it loses the headphone jack. The company says this was to achieve an IP54 waterproof rating (light splashes) -- a first for the Fairphone brand. It's also been announced that it will come with an industry-leading 5-year warranty and aims to get 6 years of software updates for the phone.

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