Fairphone prices a replacement screen at $90 on its first US phone

The money case turns on the second repair. Fairphone lists a replacement screen at around $90 and a battery at around $40, where Fast Company puts the iPhone equivalents as high as $379 and $129 ^{[9][11][10][12]}. One of each costs $130 in Fairphone parts against up to $508 on the Apple side, a gap of $378 ^[3], or 58 percent of what the phone cost in the first place ^[4]. The Fairphone figures are parts you fit yourself and the iPhone figures are ceilings, so $378 is the widest that gap gets.

A dozen parts out in twenty minutes averages under two minutes each ^[6]. The review tested taking the phone apart. Fitting a new screen, closing the case and living with the result for a year is a different job. Fairphone CTO Chandler Hatton told Fast Company that anyone who can put together Ikea furniture can do the repairs ^[6], and that the company was after a change in how owners see the object. "It's something that's so different from our contemporary relationship with consumer electronics," she said ^[7].

Getting there meant asking suppliers and in-house engineers to work differently. "We're asking our suppliers as well as our own engineers to do something that's quite different," Hatton said ^[8]. Inside, the parts most likely to need replacing are grouped so they come out first, and the same layout makes the phone easier to recycle at end of life ^[18].

Thin phones are glued rather than screwed, and the glue is also what keeps water out ^[14]. The Fairphone is slightly thick and is not built to go underwater, though the review found it safe to use in the rain ^[14].

I'd read the warranty twice. Two years as standard, extendable by three, so five years of cover; the battery gets two years plus 14 months, which is 38 months ^[13][5]. Five years of cover on a user-serviceable phone is a promise about stock as much as about hardware.

More than half the materials in the phone are recycled or fairly sourced, including aluminum, copper, steel, tin, indium, nickel and rare earths ^[15]. On cobalt, Fairphone decided against steering clear of particular mines, on the grounds that they are an important source of livelihood, and works with communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo to improve conditions instead ^[16]. "We're really trying to lean into the hard problems, and then have conversations with the whole value chain, particularly the people that are working in a specific area," Hatton said ^[17].

For anyone weighing this against the phone already in their pocket, the useful test is their own repair history over the past three years, in dollars actually paid for screens and batteries. Zero paid means the $378 parts gap is worth nothing in cash to them, and they are buying the sourcing record and the five-year cover ^[3]. Two screens paid means the parts pricing covers more than half the price of the handset ^[4]. Whether repairability sells anything shows up later, in how many owners buy a $90 screen in year three.