Today I can throw back the curtain and announce:
The Fairphone 4 >>

I joined Fairphone four years ago. I knew nothing about phones. But I did know something about chocolate. And supply chains. As First Lady of Chocolate at Tony’s Chocolonely, I knew what it was like to work at a company that was out to change the rules and behaviour of an entire industry. We worked towards slave-free chocolate and, like Fairphone, we shared our sources with other buyers. We were not out to corner the market on fair — we wanted the entire industry to change.

With each Fairphone we launched, we’ve raised the bar of our challenge to the electronics industry on both sustainability and human rights.

The journey to Fairphone 4

Fairphone 1 marked our debut in the industry as a force for change— we were the first smartphone company to focus on sourcing conflict-free materials. We championed repairability when the Fairphone 2 became the first modular phone on the market. With Fairphone 3 we widened our reach, scaled up, and proved that sustainability is a viable business model.

It’s only because our incredible community of Fairphone users have journeyed with us that we’ve been able to keep raising that bar and creating our beautiful disruption. They are our values-led family, our first adopters. Some of them will make a choice for a fair and ethical product — whether it’s chocolate or their phone — on the basis of a single question: is it the most sustainable and ethical choice?

Fairphone 4 is all about making a fair choice easier. Our product strategy was literally to focus on an uncompromising phone, beautifully designed with a software ecosystem and services that makes it truly enjoyable to be used for as long as possible. In short, I wanted the Fairphone 4 to be a phone that anyone could love, and love longer. It comes with a five-year warranty – well beyond the standard 2 years that the EU requires. The screen is Gorilla Glass, the body aluminium instead of plastic, it blazes along on a 64-bit octa-core processor, connects at 5G, and rocks a 48-megapixel dual-camera. And just look at it: the purpose of its design shines through.

Innovating where it counts

But as with any work of craftsmanship or art, there are a lot of things you don’t see that make the Fairphone beautiful. You don’t see the Fairtrade Gold. You don’t see the phone we recycle or refurbish for every Fairphone 4 we sell, making it the world’s first electronic-waste-neutral phone. You don’t see the incentives we provide for improvements in worker satisfaction. You don’t see the communities where children are in school rather than laboring in tungsten mines. You don’t see the absence of single-use plastic packaging or the reduced carbon footprint of your phone’s extended lifetime.

A look “behind the scenes” of our new Fairphone 4.

When I was a child, I staged a shadow theatre performance with a group of friends. You didn’t need to know what was going on behind the curtain or what the forms were made of to enjoy the story. But the story was beautiful only because so many invisible things were happening behind that curtain to make it so.

In developing this phone, I’ve watched so many of the dedicated staff at Fairphone and our partners around the world leap over the most amazing challenges. I’m all the more proud to see this phone come to market knowing just how much improvisation and invention it takes when you’re creating a new path and disrupting an industry. There’s no map when you’re scouting unexplored territory, and the unexpected is the rule rather than the exception.

The next level of fair

The Fairphone 4 is an uncompromising and beautiful phone, built for people who want an uncompromising and beautiful phone. When Fairphone became profitable last year, we proved to the industry that there’s a viable market for products made with ethical and sustainable values.

The Fairphone 4 aims to prove that the market for ethical and sustainable products is becoming mainstream.

Because the day will come when we won’t need to peek behind the curtain to ask if our phone or our chocolate are produced fairly and sustainably. They just will be.

Eva