Fairphone provides totally refurbished handsets to its modular reuse combine • TechCrunch
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Away from the premium smartphone feature-utility hyperbole swirling round dynamic islands, cellular units stay a lot of a muchness. However moral cellular model Fairphone has at all times achieved innovation in a different way — making use of consideration to produce chain circumstances 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 as we speak — supplied as a extra environmentally conscientious various to buying final 12 months’s Fairphone 4 flagship (aka, its first 5G handset).
This implies you possibly can choose up a three-year-old Fairphone 3 with the promise that it’ll work for (not less than) one other couple of years. That represents an honest run for an Android-based smartphone — akin to iPhone-levels of gadget 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 gadget.)
The “New Life Version” of the Fairphone 3 is being offered for €359.
The Fairphone 3 is already modular, so house owners of the gadget have at all times been capable of keep away from the necessity for a full improve by paying to exchange solely components that break or in any other case want a lift.
Fairphone stated it can additionally offer refurbished Fairphone 3+ handsets within the coming weeks. The latter was already backwards suitable with the Fairphone 3 and out there as a €70 improve by swapping out a number of modules (vs shopping for an entire new Fairphone handset).
The Dutch social enterprise is now taking that reuse agenda somewhat additional by bringing totally refurbished handsets to market — providing an entry level to its reusable, modular mobiles that comes with an excellent decrease carbon footprint because the 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 concerning the refurbished gadget sale which notes the second-hand units will include a brand new or “almost-new” battery that it stated “ensures not 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 spanking new units of this mannequin,” Fairphone added.
The marketplace for second hand smartphones has been heating up for years because the cellular market has matured and {hardware} innovation has change into more and more incremental — driving main investments into reseller marketplaces equivalent to France’s Again Market and Finland’s (iPhone-focused) Swappie, to call two.
Environmental issues are additionally encouraging customers to look towards pre-owned mobiles — and go for reuse vs shopping for new.
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