Away from the premium smartphone feature-utility hyperbole swirling round dynamic islands, cell units stay a lot of a muchness. However moral cell model Fairphone has at all times completed innovation in a different way — making use of consideration to provide chain situations and novel modularity to help repairability and lifespan longevity, with a twin mission to make shopper electronics extra moral and sustainable.
It’s now added one other string to its sustainability bow by promoting a (restricted) inventory of its 2019 flagship, the Fairphone 3, as refurbished handsets — which include a two-year guarantee.
It stated the refurbished Fairphone 3 units are on sale from in the present day — provided as a extra environmentally conscientious various to buying final 12 months’s Fairphone 4 flagship (aka, its first 5G handset).
This implies you’ll be able to decide up a three-year-old Fairphone 3 with the promise that it’ll work for (no less than) one other couple of years. That represents an honest run for an Android-based smartphone — akin to iPhone-levels of machine longevity. (NB: Fairphone has beforehand achieved seven years of software program help for the Fairphone 2 by getting Android 10 working on the 2015-released machine.)
The “New Life Version” of the Fairphone 3 is being offered for €359.
The Fairphone 3 is already modular, so homeowners of the machine have at all times been capable of keep away from the necessity for a full improve by paying to interchange solely elements that break or in any other case want a lift.
Fairphone stated it would additionally offer refurbished Fairphone 3+ handsets within the coming weeks. The latter was already backwards suitable with the Fairphone 3 and obtainable as a €70 improve by swapping out a number of modules (vs shopping for a complete new Fairphone handset).
The Dutch social enterprise is now taking that reuse agenda a little bit additional by bringing absolutely refurbished handsets to market — providing an entry level to its reusable, modular mobiles that comes with an excellent decrease carbon footprint for the reason that handset you’re shopping for has already been pre-owned.
“These pre-owned telephones have been refurbished in France and examined to make sure 100% performance,” stated Fairphone in a press announcement in regards to the refurbished machine sale which notes the second-hand units will include a brand new or “almost-new” battery that it stated “ensures no less than 80% of the unique capability”.
There may be restricted inventory of the refurbished telephones — so gross sales will solely proceed whereas shares final.
“They’ve the identical 2-year manufacturing guarantee initially reserved for brand new units of this mannequin,” Fairphone added.
The marketplace for second hand smartphones has been heating up for years because the cell market has matured and {hardware} innovation has develop into more and more incremental — driving main investments into reseller marketplaces reminiscent of France’s Again Market and Finland’s (iPhone-focused) Swappie, to call two.
Environmental considerations are additionally encouraging customers to look towards pre-owned mobiles — and go for reuse vs shopping for new.
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