Repair professionals disassemble the Fairphone 5 and the verdict couldn’t be clearer

The independent repairers at iFixit are full of praise for the Fairphone 5. They regularly take apart new laptops, tablets and smartphones and see how well the devices can be repaired. Now they have ‘dissected’ and assessed the Fairphone 5. The pleasant result: 10 out of 10 possible points. No other smartphone is easier to repair.

In comparison, the new iPhone 15 and Samsung’s Galaxy S23 Ultra each received 4 out of 10 points from iFixit, which shows insufficient repairability.

The Fairphone 3 and 4 already achieved high marks in the repair test, something no other smartphone manufacturer has achieved so far. This is made possible by the Fairphone’s largely unique modular design, which allows easy access to all key components.

Even with the Fairphone 5, which is produced as sustainably and socially responsible as possible, the back can be removed without tools to replace the battery, for example. Under the cover there are a total of ten modules such as cameras, speakers or displays, which can be ordered online and replaced by the users themselves. The components are accessible with a standard screwdriver and are not glued, making repairs much easier. Fairphone also provides repair instructions.

Unlike Apple, the manufacturer does not use software locks that make independent repairs more difficult and expensive.

A number of other details emerge from iFixit’s repair test: Fairphone has made minor changes to the product design to better protect the smartphone against water damage. The battery also takes up more space than the previous model because the capacity has been slightly increased.

The repair professionals like that the cameras can be repaired individually. If a lens is damaged, the entire camera module does not need to be replaced. The USB-C charging port – a part that is often defective in smartphones – is now a little easier to replace.

Repairability versus battery life

The main difference with the Fairphone 4 only becomes apparent when the smartphone is completely disassembled into its individual parts: instead of the innovative internal structure of its predecessor, the repair test reveals a more traditional product design, as seen in many other smartphones. According to Fairphone, this step backwards was necessary to create more space for a larger battery.

The battery life was actually a criticism of the Fairphone 4, which they now wanted to eliminate. However, according to iFixit, the design change required for this means that laymen can inadvertently break a connection that should not be broken during a repair attempt.

Fortunately, Fairphone takes this risk into account with warning stickers intended to prevent amateur repairers from unintentionally disconnecting cables. If you’ve disconnected one too many connections, there are clear instructions on how to reconnect them correctly.

All in all, repairing the Fairphone 5 is “easy to do right and hard to do wrong,” the repair professionals praise. This is exactly what intuitive repair design is all about. The only disappointment is that the fingerprint sensor is still very difficult to repair.

What distinguishes the Fairphone from many other manufacturers is the extensive software support: with other smartphones, repairs after six years usually no longer make sense because the devices no longer receive updates and therefore become unsafe. Not so with Fairphone.

Software updates for a decade

Major smartphone manufacturers such as Samsung and Google have improved their update policies considerably recently and now offer security updates for five or even seven years for their latest top models. The small provider Fairphone outperforms them with an industry-unique update guarantee for 8 years until 2031, which will later be extended until 2033. For the Fairphone 5, the manufacturer specifically promises 5 generations of Android updates and up to 10 years of security updates.

Fairphone kept its update promises with previous models, although it must be said that new Android versions were distributed much more slowly than with major manufacturers such as Google and Samsung. So it remains to be seen whether the Dutch will become faster in the future.

To provide the smartphone with updates for a whole decade, Fairphone uses a trick: instead of a typical smartphone processor, which is only supported for a few years, the Fairphone 5 runs on an industrial chip that is supplied by the manufacturer with updates for a becomes a much longer period. This chip, currently Qualcomm’s fastest industrial chip, currently offers more than sufficient performance. But only time will tell whether it will also meet future requirements.