Fairphone (Gen. 6+) Review: The Repairable, Ethical Phone Finally Arrives in the US

It’s time to vote with your wallet.

The US has long had fewer smartphone options than the rest of the world. The Apple-and-Samsung duopoly, supported largely by carriers—where people buy most smartphones—has made it hard for other phone brands to break through. It’s partly why the Dutch manufacturer Fairphone hasn’t sold its repairable, ethically made smartphone in the US in its 13-year existence—until now.

Fairphone finally made it across the pond with a new model, the Fairphone (Gen. 6+). If you’ve complained about the lack of repairable smartphones, the inability to self-replace a battery, or even the idea of a more ethically manufactured phone, the Fairphone should be on your list (if it’s time to upgrade).

I’ve been using this $650 Android handset for several weeks, and it’s pretty good.

Fairer Phone

There isn’t much of a difference between the Fairphone (Gen. 6) I reviewed last year and the (Gen. 6+). The phone comes in a new cobalt blue color to commemorate people who work in the cobalt mines (a crucial component in smartphones) and the Fair Cobalt Alliance, a nonprofit cofounded by Fairphone.

Chiefly, the Fairphone has a slightly more souped-up processor—the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 4—alongside 12 GB of RAM. That last part is important, as many of the new software features in our smartphones, specifically those powered by artificial intelligence, demand a lot of memory; the 12 gigs here should give the Fairphone a longer shelf life in being able to take advantage of those capabilities.

Performance has been plenty satisfactory, whether I was using Google Maps to navigate, doomscrolling through Instagram Reels, or playing Pokémon Go while waiting for a doctor’s appointment. My benchmarks show the tiniest of performance bumps over the processor in the Gen 6. You may see a slight stutter here and there, but it barely affects day-to-day use. The software is also more polished this time around; I haven’t run into notable bugs, which I can’t say for last year’s model.

I don’t mind the look of the new Fairphone—the blue and the yellow-accented button is a fun combo—but it does have a very plasticky feel. You might like Fairphone’s accessory system, which lets you replace part of the backplate with accessories like a wallet or phone grip by removing two screws (you can use the included screwdriver). I haven’t bothered, as it feels a little clunky; I don’t want these items permanently on the back, and unscrewing them is a hassle. Hopefully, Fairphone can move to a MagSafe-like system in the future.

The 6.3-inch AMOLED, 120-Hz screen is more than adequate. It’s colorful, sharp, and bright enough to read in sunlight. Fairphone’s adaptive brightness mode can be a little aggressive, so I often manually adjusted the brightness slider, but I don’t have much else to complain about.

Battery life from the 4,415-mAh cell isn’t impressive, but it won’t have you running to a wall outlet all the time either. I typically ended most days with around 20 percent by bedtime; that’s with around five to six hours of screen-on time. It’s a shame there’s no wireless charging, but that’s a nice-to-have, not necessarily a deal-breaker. Oddly, the phone doesn’t come with a USB-C cable (the lack of a charging block is standard across phones these days), but the idea is that you probably have one lying around in a drawer. Less e-waste!

The dual-camera system, powered by a 50-MP main and a 13-MP ultrawide, is solid. No, Fairphone can’t really compete with the big tech giants like Google, Apple, and Samsung on this front. Low-light scenes suffer the most, with details lost in shadows—stay very still to avoid a blurry image. Photos from the 32-MP selfie camera can also look a little soft. Still, it’s not so poor that you won’t use it. You’ll get perfectly adequate results, but if you rely heavily on your smartphone’s camera for video and photos, you may want to look elsewhere.

Fairphone doesn’t meddle too much with the base Android 16 software, except for Fairphone Moments, which is tied to the yellow switch on the right edge of the phone. Flick the switch, and the phone’s interface goes minimal, only offering access to a handful of apps. You can create your own Moments—up to five apps—to help you focus on the task at hand. For example, if you’re driving, you can flick the switch and have it only let you access Google Maps, Spotify, and Phone. It’s a neat system, though its practicality completely depends on your willpower to use it.

I’d have liked to see Fairphone win some brownie points with a headphone jack, but alas. You’ll at least appreciate the microSD card slot to expand on the already generous 256 GB of internal storage (unusual at this price). You might even prefer the capacitive fingerprint sensor baked into the side power button, rather than the under-display fingerprint sensor in most Android phones.

Long Lasting

People are holding onto their phones for longer. But manufacturers can do several things to make it easier. Software and security updates are crucial, and thankfully, Fairphone promises seven years of updates through 2033. It also comes with a five-year warranty, virtually unheard of for a phone.

A big part of the Fairphone is repairability (iFixit gave it a 10/10 score). With the included screwdriver, you can remove that same backplate mentioned earlier to access the battery. Fairphone has instructions on its website for accessing the 11 other components you can replace, from the speakers and display to the USB-C port. Fairphone will sell these parts through 2033, and they’re cheap, too! Replacing the display, for example, will cost just $90. (You can also access most of this information in the preinstalled My Fairphone app.)

There are some caveats. The Fairphone (Gen. 6+) only has an IP55 dust- and water-resistance rating, meaning it’ll be fine in the rain, but a drop in the pool may wreck it. That’s the trade-off for having such easy access to the device’s internals for repairs.

And while the Gen. 6+ works on T-Mobile and AT&T, it doesn’t support Verizon (which includes all the smaller MVNOs that rely on Verizon’s network, like Visible). Fairphone’s website has a chart showing carrier compatibility, and you’ll see that some MVNOs on AT&T’s network are only partially supported, like Boost Mobile and Cricket. Other limitations include the lack of millimeter-wave 5G or missing eSIM support on T-Mobile. For what it’s worth, I’ve used it with an eSIM on Google Fi—the phone dips to 4G more often than other phones, but it hasn’t been a big issue for me. Your mileage may vary.

Can you find better specs for the money? Sure. The Pixel 10a will easily give you a better camera system. For $50 more, the new Samsung Galaxy S26 FE delivers flagship-grade performance and a telephoto camera. But you’ll also be out of pocket if you drop either phone and need a screen replacement. The Fairphone doesn’t have that problem, and you’ll have a little more peace of mind that your phone was made sustainably, with fair wages paid out to folks in the supply chain. The Fairphone (Gen. 6+) proves you no longer have to make massive compromises just to take a stand.