Fairphone Easy: a smartphone subscription for a fairer future

UPDATE: Unfortunately, due to various reasons, Fairphone Easy has been suspended indefinitely from April 2024 onwards. While we still believe very strongly in the concept, it does not make business sense for us at the moment. Keep reading to learn more about the initiative and what it meant for the industry as a whole.

The world needs a new business model. The electronics industry focuses on selling new devices as often as possible to make a profit, driving rapid product life cycles, overconsumption and waste. Fairphone knows that while profit is important, a fairer, cleaner future is most important of all; we must move towards a circular economy that makes the most of the resources we have. That’s why we love longevity and design longer-lasting, easily repairable smartphones – while encouraging others to embrace longevity too. After all, the longer you keep your phone, the lower its environmental and social footprint. That’s where our new business model comes in.

Introducing Fairphone Easy

We are proud to announce the launch of Fairphone Easy, a smartphone subscription service that takes our circular ambitions to the next level. We’re giving users in The Netherlands the option to use our most sustainable and modular phone yet, the Fairphone 4 (in green, with 8GB/256GB), for a fixed monthly fee, rather than buying it.

Fairphone Easy subscribers don’t need to worry about replacing their phone or about fixing it when something breaks. We take care of any maintenance or upgrades needed. Users are also rewarded with lower monthly fees if they take care of and use their phone for longer: for every year the phone stays damage free, the monthly discount increases, rewarding users for taking part in our mission for smartphone longevity.

Is Fairphone Easy more sustainable?

How is a subscription service more circular and sustainable than simply buying a phone, you may wonder? The current business model of our industry sees about 1.4 billion mobile phones sold globally. Users keep their phones for an average of 2-3 years, yet only 15% of discarded phones are collected for recycling. This adds to the growing world’s e-waste problem – and increasing CO2 emissions, as 70% of a smartphone’s lifetime emissions occur during production. The more new phones, the larger the environmental impact. These rapid lifecycles not only have a negative impact on the planet, but also on the people working in the supply chain. The longer a phone (and all its materials) are in use, the lower the impact on people and the planet. Fairphone Easy maximizes the lifetime of our phones and their materials, while ensuring a great user experience and providing a more sustainable business model for the smartphone industry.

What makes Fairphone Easy circular?

Fairphone Easy encourages subscribers to increase the lifetime of their phone by ensuring they enjoy keeping their phone in use longer. If the subscriber stops, Fairphone ensures the phone ‘lives on’ by refurbishing it and giving it to a new subscriber, or re-using the parts to repair another phone. At the end of the phone’s life, Fairphone will make sure it is properly recycled. This way it won’t become e-waste, or end up in a drawer where its valuable materials cannot be utilized.

This business model has been a long-time wish of ours; until now we’ve mostly been working on making the process of designing and producing a phone fairer for people and planet. But, after the customer buys the phone, the process is out of our hands. With Fairphone Easy’s service model, we can now make the phone’s entire life cycle fairer and more sustainable, by encouraging longer use and ensuring its re-use and proper recycling.

Want to know more about Fairphone Easy? You can find all the details here, and if you’re in the Netherlands and in need of a new phone, join us, and become part of the circular solution!