Here's the Messy Truth About How Smartphones are Made

If you're watching this video on your phone, you literally have gold in your hands, and cobalt, and tin, and many more materials. In our industry, a lot of these materials are mined under very bad circumstances that harm people and the planet. We're on a mission to change that. Last year we launched the award-winning Fairphone Gen6, our fairest phone yet. And in this video, we'll tell you all about what that means, how we did it, and the challenges that we faced along the way. We'll also look back at how the industry has changed over the past years. Already Fairphone One did not have a charger and a cable in the box. This is 2013, right? Why would you give a cable and a charger? Everyone has one already at home. We'll go step by step from raw materials, to manufacturing, to making sure you can use it for as long as possible. So, when you start developing a Fairphone, where do you even begin? We design products. We develop products according to an overarching roadmap. So, in many ways, you could say that the development of the Gen6 actually started way back when we designed the first Fairphone. And that's not to say that it's the same device. It's come a long way, but a lot of that thinking has stayed the same. And one thing, to just use a very simple example, is our impact agenda. And we started off focusing on conflict minerals way back in the early days, amongst others on cobalts in DRC. We have a lot of conversations about where we think we can really move the needle. And if you just look at the fair and recycled materials, then we're above 50% with this device. And that's not something that we did overnight. It's something that we've done along the roadmap, and it's something that we'll continue to build out in our future devices. So, let's talk about our impact. We'll start with how we get our raw materials. Right now, we have 23 focus materials like cobalt, gold, and coltan. And by focusing our efforts on these materials, we can have the biggest possible impact on people and the planet. So, we do our best to track down where these materials come from in our supply chain. And this is a lot more difficult than you might think. There's a lot of work there. There's a lot of work in discussing with the suppliers, understanding how their supply chain looks like, to a certain extent, having contracts with them as well to make sure, you know, that we deliver on what we said. We know 100% of our final assemblies. We know 100% of their suppliers. That's 80 suppliers that supply the final assembly with parts and materials. Before that, you end up with like 700 suppliers in the tier 3 who supply the sub-suppliers. And they also have a whole range. So, it keeps escalating and escalating. So, my basic estimate would be there's approximately between 5,000 to 15,000 suppliers somewhere in the supply chain of a smartphone. We don't have 100% full visibility of it. Especially, if you go deeper into the supply chain, companies are becoming much more reluctant to share. They don't know us because we're a customer of their customer of their customer. They have no idea who the hell Fairphone is. So, they're not giving out all of their supply chain information yet. Sometimes, it's even impossible to trace materials from a phone all the way back to the mine site. As an example, let's take gold. There is 0.02 grams of gold in a Fairphone. That is in 170 components. All of those 170 supply chains, they have like 5 or 6 suppliers in there before you get to the mine site. So, let's multiply. You're talking about, let's say, 800 to 1,000 suppliers that all need to provide documentation, dig in, go through to fully trace all that for 0.02 grams for one product. The consequence being that we can do that for components that have a certain material in a high volume, but not for all those small ones. There's so much time and effort being spent on something that's so little or what happens a lot actually is also like the smelters and refiners. They put all the gold in one big melting pot. You can't separate it anymore. So, even if you know the mine sites, later on in the manufacturing, it can't be traced anymore physically. But even though it's really difficult and almost impossible to find out where all of these materials are from, we still put in a real effort for our 23 key materials. We look at it, where are they in the phone? Which components are they? We go a step deeper, another step deeper, and in some cases, we know the whole supply chain down to the recycled source or the mine. Every day, we keep working on expanding that knowledge. So, keep mapping deeper and further into the supply chain. But it's a massive problem, right? That's the reality that we need to deal with with such a complex product and find a way to still make impacts regardless of that challenge. And one way to make an impact when you don't know where the materials are coming from exactly is using a credit system. Now, not every company means the same thing when they say they use credits to offset something. But for us, it's a way to contribute directly to the projects that benefit miners and their communities. So, each gram of gold in the phone, we pay a little bit extra so that that same amount of gold is somewhere mined under better conditions, more fairly, so that gold miners actually get a better income, get safer working conditions, their kids can go to school, the environment is treated better. Instead of spending a lot of energy and time just on traceability and making no impact yet, we're making an impact now, today, because there's an impact happening already today. It doesn't fully mean that we have the full traceability in the supply chain, but we are sure that we're making that impact for the miners, for the small-scale miners. It's how we work, for example, with Fairtrade Gold. It's how we work with Fairmined Gold. It's how we work also with Cobalt Credits. And we're still trying to scale this up also to other minerals and to the larger industry so we can all start making more impact now for the people who need it most. And we got a lot of questions about this as well, especially about the work that we do in the Democratic Republic of Congo. So we asked Renko to tell us a little bit more about what we do in the DRC. There, we're working through an alliance of companies and NGOs and local NGOs to really help small-scale miners, who are a big part of the economy, actually. Like, they really depend on mining for earning an income and paying the schools of their children and the food, etc., to help them make a better living, do it in a safer way, and help the environment, actually, that it's also done in a better way. So we have local partners on the ground who, step by step, help these people. And you can think of an example like the women that are washing the stones that come out of the mine. They were washing them, but without gloves on. And now they have boots and gloves. And that sounds like a small thing, but it's actually a really big thing when it comes to your own health and safety. So these steps actually help along the way. And the nice thing is, for example, in this project also, the miners, they have quite a big voice in what are we going to improve first. So that's safety in the mines, but also, for example, with the women washing the minerals, for example. So that's one thing that we do. This is a topic that we can make endless amounts of videos about. So let us know in the comments what more you want to see about the FAIR materials. For now, we'll move on to the next stage in a FAIRphone's life, the manufacturing. And because we have very high standards for the suppliers that we choose, this comes with major challenges. For us, of course, we are pushing also and leading with our suppliers to grow and achieve those standards. It's like when you play a game, you know, it's that you go with easy mode or you go with insane mode. For us, it's like that. It's less choices and makes it extra difficult. Choosing who is going to actually manufacture this product, right? And what are the sub-suppliers that we're going to use for the components of this product? It's also a mix of technical capabilities and impact considerations. So where we think these companies can be helped to increase their impact goals. So anything that has to do with employee well-being, but also integration of FAIR materials. So our final assembly is, for example, in China. And if you go one layer deeper, component manufacturing all over Asia, and in some cases also Europe or the US. One of the issues that I'm also very proud of is people get paid living wages. Meaning, if you earn an income, you can support a family with housing, food, schools, healthcare. So you're not stuck in poverty. And unfortunately, that is the case for a lot of people who work full-time and they're still stuck in poverty because the wages are insufficient, actually. So Fairphone is the first electronics company to support supply chain workers with living wages. And we do that for the final assembly, as well as for key component suppliers. So we're going deeper into the supply chain and keep expanding that. Besides wages, we're looking at the whole system of working conditions. Are people being treated well? Is their health and safety protected? Do they have a voice in the workplace? Do they have representation? And it depends a little bit per supplier, what we focus on, depending on the needs and the situation. We support them with improving health and safety, starting worker surveys, training worker representatives and building democratic worker elections, for example. So workers have a voice in the workplace and they can co-decide on what happens. And our Fairphone staff actually go to the factories and they follow up on the action plans that we decide together with the manufacturers and also based on the input from the workforce of the suppliers. And all of that is captured in our impact reports. So you can read more about the kind of topics we address with the suppliers in our supply chain. And I think what's a bit different with Fairphone versus some of the other companies is that we're doing this deeper in the supply chain as well. So we're not stopping at the final assembly, we're going a step deeper to component manufacturing or even beyond that. Again, there's lots more to talk about when it comes to what we do to make sure factory workers are treated fairly. So let us know in the comments if you have any more questions about this. But for now, let's talk about what happens after the phone is put together. When you buy a Fairphone, we want to make sure that you can keep it for a really long time. And we do that by combining great hardware quality backed by a five-year warranty, a modular and repairable design, and of course, eight years of software support after launch. We talked about the hardware and repairability already in a previous video that is linked below, but we haven't told you what the secret is to our industry-leading software support. Something particularly interesting about this point of time was actually the software support and how much of that software support for how many years would be, let's say, available. We are going to give at least eight years software support. That means both Android upgrades, but also security updates. And that also plays a very big role in the chips selection. Fairphone was the first Android company to keep providing really long-term Android software support. Even though the chipset maker, who normally determines how long support happens actually, said chipset maker, we wanted to do it ourselves. And it was quite hard because you need to, one, develop a whole customized Android for your phone and get all the approvals from Google Android and all of the other certificates that you need. So it was a massive amount of work and also in time and money investments really big, but we were able to demonstrate it for seven years. That's right. The Fairphone 2 was the first Android smartphone that received seven years of software and security updates all the way from Android 5 to Android 10, even though the chipset maker had stopped support after Android 6. And the cool thing is that now, a few years later, we're also working a bit together with the chipset maker to see, okay, how can we actually push longer-term support forward. So that's quite exciting, right? Because then you see also a change that doesn't just apply to Fairphone, but that ripples down into the further industry. We showed that it could be done. Again, pushing the boundaries and then at some point the other companies are picking it up as well. And even now, again, we're guaranteeing eight years of software support. Of course, we'll aim for more, but we can't promise. But it means that at least you can use the phone for a really long time and in an unprecedented way, actually, when it comes to smartphone support. So our goal is to change the entire industry. And as we've discussed, we've seen some other Android manufacturers also extend software support, not all the way to eight years, but still longer than they were before. And that drive to change the industry is why we're all here. Was there a moment when you felt, yes, this is why we're doing this? Yeah, that's a great question. And in fact, I think it's not something that happened in terms of the Gen 6 itself, but more something that I've seen in the industry. And that's that we had started Fairphone in order to make a difference, in order to change the way that the consumer electronics industry works. And we see that it is changing and that's fantastic to see. And it makes me really excited to see more OEMs incorporating different fair materials or recycled materials into their products to see longer warranties, longer software support. And this is something that we've always been advocating for, that we've always been fighting for. We've always been building into our products. And it's so great to see other parties also doing that. We know that we have had an influence. It's very difficult to calculate that influence, but to say like, you know, to put cause and consequence exactly for everything that we have done. But we have definitely had a very heavy weight and contributed to the discourse of bringing more sustainability into the electronics industry. And why I know this? Because since 2013, we've been showing to everyone our projects, writing reports about them, showing data and publishing data. And all this data, all these reports, all these writings have ended up in boardrooms of other companies, have ended up at European Commission tables, right? We have been invited in, I don't know how many different events where we were presented, let's say like some sort of poster child, right? Which has pros and cons, but like we've been in many places where the only example that people could talk about, like real, tangible example was actually Fairphone. And I think more than 10 years of that has had an influence in how people look at the challenges that they are facing. Because let's be clear, right? Like the people that work at other companies, they also want to do good, right? But sometimes it's difficult. Sometimes it's a very big organization that they have around. There's a lot of people that they need to change mindsets. And I think like with us, they've always had like an example that they could mention, right? They could say, okay, it can be done this way at this scale. Well, why can't we do it in our scale? So yeah, I have multiple examples of conversations of people that I know are using us as a bit of an example. And it's very humbling also, right? Because of course we also don't do everything perfect. And a Fairphone is not 100% fair phone. We always say this, right? There's a lot of things that we need to achieve still, but we have shown that you can get to a certain edge, a certain edge of software longevity, a certain age of percentage of recycled materials, a certain age of percentage of fair materials coming from fair mining practices. Yeah. And that helps other people to move the needle in their organizations. If you could describe the Fairphone in one word, what would it be? Well, I have to say the word is in the name. I love it. I think it's nice.