Fairphone 6 Review- The Ethical Smartphone

Real talk. This channel relies heavily on people interested in a constant stream of new technology hitting the market. And it's hosted by one of those people, too. So I've always thought it would be sort of hypocritical of me to focus on ease of repair or sustainability in my content. But when a product combines those aspirational qualities with new thinking about how we should be using our technology, well, that's something I can't help but try out. This is the Fairphone 6, a mobile device from the Amsterdam-based company of the same name that's modular, repairable, and made to be mindful. In other words, the opposite of pretty much every other smartphone. Looking back at my videos from the year, it's been almost five months since I last used a smartphone that wasn't top of the line. Moving into the Fairphone for this review was definitely an adjustment. Instead of glass and metal, the enclosure is recycled plastic. In fact, the company says recycled or fair trade materials comprise more than half of its 193-gram mass. In the hand, it feels even lighter than that, almost hollow compared to more common phones. And it's not particularly ambitious in its design, with large asymmetrical bezels, pronounced panel gaps that flex in some spots, and a kind of generic slab-sided casing. Knowing it was assembled by people being paid a fair wage at a factory that meets high ethical standards is supposed to counter that. And to be honest, yeah, it does. But more on that in a moment. I have three favorite parts of the Fairphone, and two of them are these screws. Back them out with the T5 Torx screwdriver that comes with any of the accessories, press gently on the shallow dimple down below, and the back plate pops off to let you replace almost anything. The battery, the OLED screen, all three cameras, and time-of-flight sensor, the earpiece and speakerphone, the USB port and SIM tray, they're all user-replaceable, and offered for sale as individual components. My buddy David Amell actually did repair one for a friend recently who'd broken her camera lens, and he said it took less than five minutes, with just the one screwdriver and a credit card acting as a spudger. iFixit's 10 out of 10 repairability rating seems to be well-earned here. Those screws also make possible more modularity. You can ditch the flat back plate for a cardholder wallet, or a strap-back grip, or add a lanyard to any of the three. It's up to you whether you want to color match them or go more contrasty like I have here. If this sounds familiar, yeah, nothing did something similar on its CMF phones, and while I do appreciate the concept, I have to say I'm not a fan of any modular approach that demands a screwdriver to swap modules. Maybe I'm spoiled by MagSafe, but I love an accessory that I can easily pop on and off, and I really do think magnets are the best way to achieve that, even if they add weight and cost. My third favorite part of the Fairphone 6 is this big, beautiful switch on the side, but I want to save that for last, so let's zoom out to the general experience first. The quickest way I can sum up my week with this thing is that it feels like a solid mid-ranger. The spec sheet is neither over nor underwhelming, and the same is true of the performance it delivers. More than once, I was pleasantly surprised by the call quality. This thing eliminates wind noise and even the background din of a loud bar very effectively. There's 256GB of storage plus a microSD slot, so you can add even more space yourself instead of paying a premium. The 6.3-inch display is attractive and bright enough, but the auto brightness is slow and tends to lumber between extremes, and animations in Android 15 exhibit more judder than you might be used to, as does the cheap-feeling haptic vibration motor. Battery life, though, has been pretty solid, meeting my full-day needs even with a little bit of mobile hotspot, and also quite a bit of Spotify streaming to the Beats Buds I chose because they match the side switch. I had no trouble with any of my usual apps or features, from spamming threads to tapping to pay for my seventh coffee of the day. The IP55 rating may not be waterproof, but it is dust-tight and should easily endure any rainstorm. The only truly aggravating pitfall is the power button, which sits flush with the side and takes way too much force to trigger. A daily annoyance I will be happy to leave behind. 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You'll get 20% off Delete.me consumer plans when you go to joindelete.me.com slash mrmobile and use promo code mrmobile, or scan the QR code here. That's joindelete.me.com slash mrmobile, code mrmobile. Double-click the power key, and you'll find yourself inside an attractive but sluggish camera app that Fairphone tells me it's working to improve. Photos from the 50-megapixel main sensor are consistent with what you'd expect from a mid-range Android, and colors are sometimes more satisfying, but almost always less accurate, than the Pixel 10 and Galaxy Fold 7 I carried for comparison. But then of course they were. One is a Google phone, essentially built around its camera, and the other one costs nearly $2,000. And here's the thing. Some of the time, Google and Samsung let me down too, just in different ways, especially once we flipped over to the selfie shooters. Sure, the Fairphone wanted to make the lights super green in this cocktail bar, but both phones pretty much obliterated any face detail on David and me. Now, the Fairphone does consistently disappoint in ultra-wide, which really should have a bigger field of view, and is effectively useless in all but the brightest light. And given the limitations of the image processing and the hardware on board, I wouldn't recommend this to anyone who really, you know, capital C cares about photo and video. If you just take the occasional snap, it's fine, but no more than fine. Finally, we come to my third favorite Fairphone feature, the Switch, meant to keep you in the moment. Slide it down, and it doesn't just trigger Do Not Disturb mode, it invokes a custom launcher meant to preserve your focus by limiting your options to a handful of apps, spread across a handful of spaces. I requested this review sample from Fairphone specifically because of this feature. As you'll know if you caught my Minimal Phone and Light Phone 3 videos, 2025 has been my year of kind of dabbling with digital detox, and the notion of a switch that converts your smartphone into a dumb one was just endlessly fascinating to me. But almost immediately, I realized that this is not useful for curtailing doom scrolling or digital overdosing, at least for me, because of a simple issue Marques pointed out when I mentioned the Fairphone 6 at MKBHQ. Get the Fairphone 6, it's a smartphone with a button on the side that turns into a dumb phone. I like that. You press it, it goes into dumb phone mode. You press it again, it goes back to being a regular, that doesn't work. Yeah, there's no friction whatsoever when you want to leave the moment. You flip the Switch back, and you're back to full Android. Furthermore, there's no option to change the UI to black and white to make phone usage less compelling, as some other companies offer. I asked Fairphone about this, and the company said that restricting usage isn't why it designed this app. Instead, it's supposed to be a positive, calm space that also happens to leverage some of Android's Do Not Disturb features. But the company also said that my feedback is the most common feedback it receives about moments, and it is investigating ways of enhancing it. And you can reassign the Switch to more common uses if you prefer. With all its limitations, plus the curveball of no official availability or complete 5G band support in the US, which means you will have less coverage in some areas like, in my case, your local flower shop, why would you pay almost $700 for the Fairphone 6? Well, because for some people, I'd argue good people, where their technology comes from and how ethically it was made are important buying considerations. I've actually spoken with Fairphone a few times over the years of trade shows, and I make it a point each time to ask how the company is ensuring its partners adhere to the company's principles. And each time, I'm met with a coherent, full explanation of the audits Fairphone undertakes to ensure its products are the most ethically manufactured on the market. Explanations it also includes on its website, if you want to know more. Add in the repairability, a five-year warranty and a promised eight years of software support, and the option to buy a version that doesn't even run Android, and I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that this is the most consumer-friendly, planet-friendly phone available. It's definitely not for everyone, and in the spirit of avoiding the hypocrisy I called out up top, let me admit out loud that of course, I'm going right back to my double daily driver of dual foldables, but I'm glad there's a company out there that's trying to stand out based on its sense of humanity, instead of how to eke out another few fractions of a penny based on incremental iterations or AI bloatware. And I hope Fairphone's ethical example encourages others to follow suit. This review was produced following one week with the Fairphone 6 review sample provided by Fairphone, but as always, the company was given zero editorial input into this content, no copy approval, and no early preview of same. They're seeing it right alongside you for the first time. Check out that Light Phone 3 review from earlier this year for an in-depth exploration of what two weeks on a dumb phone does to my brain, and follow me on threads at Captain Two Phones for more Mr. Mobile between the videos. Until next time, from Michael Fisher, thanks for watching, and stay mobile, my friends.