When was the last time you could take apart your smartphone, replace a broken part yourself and put it back together with a screwdriver?
That’s the idea behind Fairphone, a European smartphone company that has been making repairable phones for years. Now, for the first time, it’s selling one directly in the U.S.
I got a chance to check out the new Fairphone Gen 6+, a $650 Android phone designed around a concept that has mostly disappeared from modern smartphones: if something breaks, you should be able to fix it yourself.
There are 12 replaceable parts, including the battery, screen, cameras and even the USB-C charging port. The phone isn’t glued together like most modern devices. Instead, you remove a handful of tiny screws, swap the part and put it back together. Fairphone even includes the screwdriver.
Replacement parts are reasonable. A new battery is $40, a screen is $90 and a USB-C port is $20.
The specs are solid for everyday use. It runs Android 16 without a bunch of added bloatware, has plenty of memory and Fairphone says you can get up to 53 hours of battery life. There’s also something you almost never see anymore: a microSD card slot that supports up to 2 TB of additional storage.
The cameras were better than I expected, too. See some of the photos I took on it below.
One feature I especially liked is called Fairphone Moments. Flip a physical switch on the side of the phone and it changes to a simplified interface with just the apps and people you choose. Think of it as a built-in dumb phone mode for when you want fewer distractions without actually giving up your smartphone.
Fairphone backs the phone with a five-year warranty and promises software support through 2033. It works with T-Mobile and AT&T and comes in blue, green and black.
This phone isn’t going to be for everyone, but I like the thinking behind it. Smartphones have increasingly become difficult and expensive to repair.
If you’re the kind of person who keeps a car for years and still likes changing the oil yourself, there’s something refreshing about a phone that lets you replace the battery or screen instead of replacing the entire device.
