Fairphone, The “First Ethical Phone”
A noble mission
Fairphone’s tagline says it all — “A seriously cool smartphone that puts social values first”.
The phone, which prides itself as being the “first ethical phone” was silently launched in the UK, while the world was more focused on the launch of iPhones, iOS7, Samsung technology and the impending demise of BlackBerry.
The mission of the a Dutch entrepreneur encompasses more than just making a smartphone — his aim is to make smartphones while ensuring:
- Fair and conflict free resources,
- Fair wages to all involved,
- e-waste solutions,
- Open future-ready design,
- Transparent pricing,
- Competitive Technical Specs.
If you’ve seen the movie “Blood Diamond” you will know that cheap resources are up for grabs and thus provide for very high margins of return (in the case of the movie it was about the diamond industry where these diamonds are known as Conflict Diamonds).
In the technology world closer to us, Apple Inc. was in news recently for the suspected poor working conditions prevalent in the factories of their manufacturing partners in China.
Fairphone aims to upend that reputation when it comes to their own brand.
About Fairphone in their own words:
“We started in 2010 as a project of Waag society, Action Aid and Schrijf-Schrijf, aimed at raising awareness about conflict minerals in electronics and the wars that the sourcing of these minerals is fueling in the DR Congo. As a research project of Waag Society, Fairphone received funding from Stichting Doen and the NCDO. During the course of its life time, Fairphone has received support from a number of partners, including, Schrijf-Schrijf, ActionAid, Stichting Doen, Vodafone, KPN, Rabo Mobiel , GSM RetourPlan , GSM Loket and many other organizations and individuals that put time and effort in leveraging the potential of Fairphone”.
Fairphone aims to neither exploit people nor Nature while manufacturing a competitive phone. They had started this project in 2010, however formally established their enterprise in 2013 with fall 2013 being the rollout date for their device.
Waag Society is known to nurture relevant technologies and concepts thought by entrepreneurs enabling them to bring their dreams to the market.
Let us take a look at the device on offer.
- A dual SIM touchscreen phone with 4.3 inch Dragontrail Glass screen displaying at 960x540 pixels.
- Designed to be less energy-hungry and more easily recyclable than current smartphones.
- Runs on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, with the interface developed by Kwame Corporation.
- Powered by a quad-core 1.2 Ghz. processor with 1 GB of RAM.
- Comes with 16 GB inbuilt memory with a microSD card slot to support 64 GB externally.
- An 8 megapixel autofocus (with image stabilization sensor) rear camera and a 1.3 megapixel front facing camera.
It is definitely a decent smartphone, and we’ll wait to lay our hands on an actual one to review it in greater detail. While the company plans to manufacture 25,000 of them now, you’d be surprised to know that more than 15,000 of the planned units have already been sold!
Another first the group wants to bring is “Fair Pricing”, where they’ll provide the breakup of the cost of the phone into various components to the customer, for her to understand why she’s paying €325 for the phone.
I can foresee many folks around the world pouncing on the opportunity to write critical articles about how some manufacturers are over charging their customers, just basis Fairphone’s transparency in sharing costs.
Playing the devil’s advocate, I would like to point out though, that other manufacturers supply millions of phone consistently and also incur the cost of transportation, replacement of devices, servicing the devices, maintaining physical outlets thus adding to the cost.
Innovating their existing product line also hits their bottom-lines.
Fairphone — another new term after the smartphone, is a noble mission and we support the cause, hoping more manufacturers take this up and rid their supply chains of unfair trade practices. That said, their own costs are bound to be significantly lower than the commercial players who need to support various overheads.
It is hard when you see the operational scale for most mobile device manufacturers, but even a small step would be appreciated. Awaiting Fairphones from other manufacturers!
Originally published at Chip-Monks.
