The Fairphone 5 is very different from other smartphones, and could even last you a decade before replacement, but would you want to keep it that long?
Fairphone 5 MSRP $755.00 Score Details DT Recommended Product “The Fairphone 5's sustainability and longevity set it apart from the competition, but a poor camera and short battery life affect its desirability.” Pros Cons I’m willing to bet the reason you are looking at the Fairphone 5 as your next phone almost certainly isn’t because of the camera, performance, screen, or processor.
And you know what? It wasn’t bad at all! The plastic rear panel unclips, and the battery can be quickly removed, revealing the SIM slot and a MicroSD card slot too. All you need to continue is the 00 Phillips screwdriver and perhaps a small spudger tool to make component removal more comfortable. The screws are tiny, but sensibly split into two groups to make it easier to remove the right section.
Temperatures stayed under control too, with only the chassis becoming slightly warm to the touch, so there’s nothing wrong with the thermal management. It seems the shorter-than-hoped-for battery life is due to the cell’s capacity, and perhaps the display, as I’ll come to later, rather than inefficiencies caused by the use of a nontraditional smartphone processor.
I love the transparent look of my review model, with its stamped, indented Fairphone logo. A Sky Blue or Matte Black version is also available, if you’d rather have something more subtle without the “Change is in your hands” script visible and making a statement. The fingerprint sensor in the power key is fast and easy to locate with your finger, although the phone is thick and slab-like at 9.6mm and surprisingly heavy at 212 grams.
The phone uses familiar old Google Photos as the gallery, but the camera app has a few idiosyncrasies. For example, you either use a less-than-precise slider to switch from the main camera to the wide-angle or have to cycle through a 2x digital zoom mode first when you tap the button. It’s not the speediest solution.
I’d also hope future software updates improve the wide-angle camera’s performance. Ultimately, if you really want the Fairphone 5, but love taking photos, I’d suggest getting a regular camera to go along with it. That may not be particularly eco-conscious, but if you really care about camera quality, it’s something you’ll need to consider.
The flat, 6.46-inch OLED screen has a 2,700 x 1,224 pixel resolution, is covered in Gorilla Glass 5, and is bright enough to be used outside in sunlight. The attractive colors and warmth make photos taken with the Fairphone 5 look good on it. It has a switchable rather than dynamic refresh rate, which may be another reason for the battery not lasting longer than a day for me, as I’ve had it permanently on 90Hz.
But what the price also does is put the Fairphone 5 alongside some very tempting competing smartphones. The Apple iPhone 14, the Samsung Galaxy S23, the OnePlus 11, and the Google Pixel 7 all cost around the same and are higher-performance devices. It’s also more expensive than great phones like the Google Pixel 7a and the Nothing Phone 2.
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