Last week at iFixit we did a teardown of the Fairphone 4, which earned an exceedingly rare 10/10 on our repairability scale. During that teardown, I was impressed with many of the decisions the Fairphone diamond team made. With repair legislation virtually the corner in most markets virtually the world (and once in effect in some places like France) there has never been a largest time for smartphone makers to take a few notes from Fairphone 4’s design, and this company’s methods. Here are some that stuck out to me during our teardown.
#1 Make it modular
The most important message I can relay to smartphone designers—and users—is just how crucial modularity is to the longevity of any device. Modularity often dictates whether a device can be useful for an uneaten year or two, and how efficiently and powerfully a device can be recycled at the end of its life.
A modular thing is one whose components can be separated and replaced individually, and the concept scales up and lanugo with the size of variegated devices. You probably take for granted the modularity of larger everyday things, like cars or bikes. Imagine needing to replace your whole velocipede when the tires wear out, or pulling out the engine of a car to replace a headlight.
No part of Fairphone 4 is glued shut, so you can segregate to hands repair it yourself with a standard screwdriver. Scale that concept lanugo to smartphones, and you’re looking for modularity in hair-trigger components to a device’s functionality, such as the screen, cameras, ports, and battery. Fairphone 4 gives users wangle to all these components and more, in just a few simple steps, requiring only a Phillips screwdriver and their fingers.
#2 Alimony it simple
I emphasize using only their fingers and a Phillips screwdriver considering simplicity is an important part of diamond for repairability. Something modular but unnecessarily complicated to disassemble is sometimes just as bad as not stuff modular at all.
A unconfined example of this sort of puzzler is Apple’s iPhone. Our iPhone 12 shower replacement guide is a whopping 42 steps long. It requires tools for heating and wearing adhesive, four variegated screwdrivers, and involves removing unrelated components virtually the battery. Anyone with repair wits will tell you iPhones are among the easier smartphones to repair (and they do regularly earn up to a 6/10 on our repairability scale), but show that guide to most repair newcomers and they’d likely let the Apple store handle it.
And that’s the rub. A modular device whose repair procedures are overly complicated, is—you guessed it—less likely to be repaired, reducing its useful lifespan, and increasing the complexity of the recycling process at the end of its life.
Compare that to a Fairphone 4 shower replacement, which doesn’t yet have iFixit guides for an apples-to-apples comparison, but I can reassure you it would be under 10 steps.
#3 Don’t fear the compromise
Smartphone diamond is inherently an exercise in compromise—you are fitting as much technology as a palmtop has, or more, into a thin handheld slab.
Fairphone made some unconfined compromises when they built Fairphone 4, and it is time for other companies to start thinking well-nigh the compromises they can make to create increasingly useful but sustainable products.
The most important—and most controversial—compromise Fairphone 4 makes has to do with its ingress protection (a.k.a. IP, or water and pebbles resistance). By aiming for a less would-be IP rating, Fairphone avoids using wrapper and instead uses a combination of clips and screws to hold their phones together. This one compromise knocks 5–10 steps and a unconfined deal of complexity off any repair.
That’s a big win, but it comes at a cost. IP certification is a spec many users squint for in a new smartphone, so a lower IP rating can put Fairphone at a disadvantage in a head-to-head comparison. Less ingress protection moreover ways the phone is technically less durable than, say, an iPhone. Here I will point out that most people do not need an IP68 certified smartphone though; IP ratings have become, like many smartphone specs, something expected to only overly go upwards. Fairphone 4’s IP54 rating will alimony it unscratched from rain, willy-nilly splashes, and encounters with sand or dust.
That’s why I’m glad Fairphone made this compromise. IP54 isn’t perfect, but it’s a good start, expressly given the repairability it enables. The smartphone industry hasn’t found the sweet spot for ingress protection yet. Other gadgets that have been virtually longer are closer to it: cameras and mechanical watches, for example, both have increasingly moving parts than smartphones, yet neither typically relies on wrapper to unzip their IP ratings (which, in some cases, are plane higher than iPhones).
Several other complicated decisions make Fairphone 4 a compelling, repairable, sustainable smartphone: the type of screws, the hard-shell Li-ion battery, processor and wireless tweedle selection, warranty support, and many others. The last one I’ll highlight here is Fairphone’s nomination to combine some of their spare parts.
#4 Combine with care
Combining parts is a hot-button issue at iFixit. Bundling two or increasingly components into one integrated “part” can raise the forfeit of what would otherwise be an inexpensive repair, and taken to an extreme, can wilt the stasis of modular design. Admittedly, we’re jaded by experiences with a few bad actors over the years. For example, Apple (not the only bad actor, but an easy one to make an example of) has a recent history of building fragile cables into expensive displays, and serializing components within their devices, then hiding overdue software bugs or paper-thin security claims.
Ultimately, combining parts is a tradeoff—when you integrate one or increasingly components, you lose modularity, but (hopefully) proceeds simplicity.
In Apple’s case, repair seems a afar consideration when combining (and serializing) parts. Fairphone, on the other hand, has ably walked this line for the past few years. Fairphone 3 was an scrutinizingly unbelievably modular device, with every component in its own spot, easy to wangle and remove on its own.
This device is a rencontre to the industry to rethink the modern smartphone: True innovation should be well-nigh solving problems, rather than creating new ones. Fairphone 4 changes up this formula by combining some of those parts. Despite my inherent apprehension, it works. By designing the combined parts to be remoter disassembled when necessary, and only integrating with low-cost parts like the woebegone antenna (shown above), they alimony spare part financing low. It’s a unconfined compromise.
There are a lot of good things to say well-nigh Fairphone 4. It was a treat to take untied without a long string of glued-shut devices this year. It’s a shame so many companies release products with very little thought well-nigh where they will end up at the end of their useful life, or how long that will take. I’m thrilled that Fairphone continues to whippersnapper that trend, and I hope other companies start to reprinting their homework.
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