Verdict
Fairphone ’s latest smartphone is a big jump over the Fairphone 4 , and has an approach path to the materials it ’s made from , its repairability and its software keep that ’s refreshing for an manufacture that often treats these high - technical school pocket wonder as disposable item . However , there ’s a Brobdingnagian question over whether it does enough to draw buyer to a telephone set that does n’t otherwise stand out from other , often tatty , mid - range offerings .
Pros
Cons
Key Features
Introduction
Longer - lasting twist are a bit of a thing the right way now , with Google ’s announcement that thePixel 8phones will meet seven years of updates .
Dutch manufacturer Fairphone can go one better than that , however , and possibly three good . Its latest product , the Fairphone 5 , come with a promise of eight days ’ worth of security patches , and ten if they can grapple it .
You only get five years of full Android version updates with the Fairphone , sadly , but this course toward length of service is crucial if we want to save both e - waste matter and money . In ten years ’ time , however , the Fairphone 5 , which is firmly in the mid - range now , probably wo n’t look so attractive .
Design
The Fairphone is all about repairability and sustainability . This means it ’s designed to be opened up without a stack of specialist tool and an incantation to an out - dimensional entity , which in turn means it ’s a bit thicker than we ’ve come to have a bun in the oven from a mod smartphone .
It ’s obtrusive if you hold it next to a Pixel 8 oriPhone 15 , but in habit , it ’s not die to matter . It might even better thing , as there ’s a bit more to restrain on to .
As such , it ’s a uniform black slab of plastic from the back and sides . Fairphone arrogate more than 70 % of the materials used in the phone are recycled ( from plastics all the direction down to the Sn used in the solder ) or ‘ fair centering ’ , which means using Fairtrade gold , the leverage of cobalt and flatware credits that benefit miners , and with the atomic number 3 in the battery measure by the Initiative For Responsible Mining Assurance to help insure it ’s mined responsibly .
On the butt of my review mannikin , there ’s a semitransparent charge plate back that ’s made to be removed , and which offers a tantalising glimpse of the electric battery and various modules at bottom , a bit like the Nothing Phones but without the fancy lighting . “ alteration is in your hands ” is emblazoned on the battery and seeable through the top , a persuasion that might reach differently once the OS updates eventually dry out up .
Getting the back off is light – no especial peter , just a ecological niche to dig your thumbnail into and take out . Once that ’s gone – it ’s a sheet of slight plastic rather than any fancy glass or ceramic – you ’re present with a lot of small but standard bad-tempered - head screwing rather than Torx or anything more exotic ( and a pack of them is useable from Fairphone in case you fall behind one in the heart of a repair ) .
The battery responds to a fingernail too , the most easily replaceable part of the phone slip out easily , exposing the microSD scorecard and SIM visiting card slots as it does so .
Elsewhere , there ’s a succinct triangular camera cluster that rises surprisingly far above the back of the phone , and there ’s a much wider arc to the corners than on many other twist , give it a distinctive look . It ’s not that heavy , despite being a bit chunky , and with a fingerprint reader progress into the baron button and face realisation unlocking on - board , it ’s a good example of amodern Android headphone .
Display
There ’s no argument that OLED screens are a self-aggrandizing bang on smartphones . Their luminosity and color intensity means you could use your phone when you ’re outdoors without needing to turn away from the Sun or scud under a tree .
The Fairphone 5 ’s screen offers a resoluteness greater than 1080p and a middle - of - the - road90Hz refresh rate . It ’s enough to keep thing bland , but once again , it has been beaten elsewhere by speech sound offering120Hz .
There ’s a Gorilla Glass 5 covering over the front , and some neat choice in the speech sound software package including a downcast light filter and a reading mode , but the giving newsworthiness is that the projection screen can be replaced , along with much of the rest of the earphone , using only a few tools .
bare parts , which also let in the cameras , USB port and speaker , are available from the Fairphone internet site , though at the time of writing were all marked as ‘ come soon ’ .
Cameras
With dual 50MP sensor that produce 12.5MP files by default , and optical image stabilization , there ’s a lot to like about the Fairphone ’s cameras .
You get a wide - angle main television camera , an ultrawide , and a depth sensor , but no true telephoto option beyond digital soar . This is o.k. if you select the 2x option , but live all the way to the maximal offered 20x present you a fuzzed junk dig that ’s unvoiced to keep still . Just as you ’d bear .
The figure the main camera ’s Sony IMX800 sensor produces are sharp enough , though slightly lacking in colour saturation , especially in the reds .
The ultrawide camera is n’t as sharp , and is more unnatural by crystalline lens flare if you ’ve got the Sun in the chassis .
The front - facing camera is celebrated for its high pixel enumeration but , again looks washed out . Video suffers from the same problems , and tops out at 4K@30fps , but benefit from the persona stabilization .
In scurvy light source , it ’s surprisingly good , with the Android Night Sight software allowing longer exposures while handheld , though the colouring wash out completely once it gets too dim . The cameras , as a whole , are o.k. . OK . serious enough . Nothing especial .
Performance
for get such a long table service aliveness for the Fairphone 5 , the manufacturer has used a chipset that ’s aspire at industrial IoT applications ( the Qualcomm QCM6490 ) rather than pocket supercomputer .
It does n’t make a draw of difference – it ’s an eight - nucleus chip like many phones have , with a single mellow - performance Congress of Racial Equality , three slightly slower cores , and four low - mightiness nucleus to work thing when the sound ’s on standby . There ’s 8 GB of RAM , and 256 GB of storage that can be augment with a 2 TB microSD add-in .
That chipset , however , is immediately going to be dominate . The hot core can touch 2.7GHz , and there are 3GHz mid - range sound already on the securities industry such as theSony Xperia 5 IV , and the flagshipiPhone 15 Prohits 3.78GHz .
It ’s enough to make you care about the seniority of a phone that ’s supposed to last several geezerhood , as you ’re more likely to upgrade if you see alternative handset rend away in terms of performance . view , though , that phones are tools of communicating , of voice call , text edition content and societal media , rather than of aeroplane design and 3D rendering , and it starts to make a bit more sentience .
There ’s ample power here for the apps I practice every day , and will continue to be into the skinny future . The Fairphone 5 ’s Geekbench scores put it about level with theMotorola Razr 40 , so it ’s not in risky company , but this may become a weakness as the phone ages .
Software
Android 14dropped while I was testing the speech sound , but the Fairphone 5 resolutely stay onAndroid 13 . It ’s a clear execution of the OS that ’s nicely free of bloatware and unneeded apps : even LinkedIn and the Booking.com app , which are usually the first to be uninstalled from a new phone , are famous by their absence seizure .
The crowing news program is the update life , which sees the Fairphone 5 getting five Android adaptation update ( which means Android 18 will be its last in 2027 ) and eight old age of security updates ( 2031 ) , which might elongate to 10 ( 2033 ) . This is a ridiculously long life for a smartphone , as many get just two years of OS updates , though the effulgence was have slightly off by Google ’s annunciation that the Pixel 8 series will receive seven old age of support .
Desktop Mode , which allows you to gazump the headphone up to an external video display in the vein ofSamsung ’s DEX mode , is another feature that ’s great to see . Activate it in the preferences app , and it work instantly when you plug in an HDMI line .
It ’s barebones and there are some drawback , let in not being able to snap apps ( which open in a tiny window and have to be resize manually unless you want them fullscreen ) to the sides of the screen door or minimise them to the taskbar .
However , if you desire to use Google Docs and a web web internet browser windowpane at the same fourth dimension , with an HDMI , computer mouse and keyboard impound to your telephone set through a USB - hundred adapter , it does the job and attain a useable PC in an emergency , with the ability to stream YouTube fullscreen too – though it ingest its toll on the battery .
Battery life
The 4,200mAh unit managed 11 hours of ceaseless use with the screen on and at 50 % luminance in tests , which well translates to a full day ’s purpose . It ’s a smaller cell than the 5,000mAh packs becoming common , but the craft - off is that it ’s replaceable .
Being able-bodied to replace the shelling in a phone is a really powerful thing that ’s been misplace in the pursuit of sparsity , as it not only means the phone can be refresh when its live electric cell has too many charging bike on the clock , but means you could conduct a spare for an crying juice - up alternatively of swear on a USB charge pack .
There ’s no courser in the loge , and the phone can draw current at 30W , which is better than nothing but far from the best tight - charge root . There ’s no radio consign either , which is a disgrace , but intelligible as the extra connection close to the airfoil of the headphone might have interfere with its repairability .
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Should you buy it?
If repairability and longevity appeal to you , there ’s no reason not to get the Fairphone 5 . Even if it does n’t last the full ten years , it might save you some money in the long political campaign .
The Fairphone 5 is n’t a bad performing artist , but it ’s not the best either .
Final Thoughts
The Fairphone 5 is amid - compass phonefor 2023 that stands out from the contention for two reason . It ’s not only repairable , but could last you until 2033 thanks to a very generous update life that , for almost a month , between the Fairphone ’s launching in September and that of thePixel 8 in October , was the long on offering .
It ’s still a very attractive proffer , however , as Google ’s new headphone is somewhat more expensive and does n’t offer such easy repairability .
The biggest problem with the Fairphone 5 is what it ca n’t do . It may have a replaceable battery and a foresightful update life history , but for 2023 , it ’s firmly in the mid - range and there are cheaper option . In a few years , it will be even less attractive to new purchasers , especially if a Pixel 8a inevitably appears .
By the end of its life history , it will have been completely overtaken by rivals with increased functioning and better photographic camera , so it will be banking on purchasers hear its enlightened approach to material , repair and software update as enough of a selling period to opt it over something cheap but less virtuously sophisticated .
While I ’d like to think that consumers will be attracted to a phone that tries to do the right thing , I fear they will blame cheaper but disposable phones rather .
How we test
We quiz every roving phone we review good . We use industry - standard tests to equate features the right way and we use the phone as our main gimmick over the critical review catamenia . We ’ll always tell you what we find and we never , ever , consent money to look back a product .
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