The Fairphone 6 Plus feels like an extremely average midrange Android phone and I couldn’t be more thrilled.
The mission has always been admirable. Fairphone seeks out ethically sourced materials and offers a high degree of repairability for its devices. But the phones themselves required a lot of sacrifices, like putting up with underpowered processors and bad cameras, in order to embrace the sustainability mission. The latest generations of Fairphone have inched toward closing that gap, and the 6 Plus achieves two huge milestones: It feels very much like using a middling Android phone, and it’s actually on sale in the US.
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The 6 Plus is a light update to last year’s Fairphone 6, which my colleague Dominic Preston reviewed and found very easy to recommend. The 6 Plus builds on it with a newer midrange Snapdragon chipset and a new color treatment. Fairphone says it’s cobalt; we know it around these parts as blurple. Otherwise, the phone is basically the same, and the replacement parts sold by Fairphone work interchangeably with both models. But above all, this phone is just fine. It runs about as fast as your typical mid-tier Razr or A-series Pixel. It offers a pleasantly close-to-stock version of Android free of bloat or gimmicky AI features. It’s just a phone. And that’s great.
8 Verge Score
Fairphone 6 Plus
$650
$650
The Good
- Highly repairable
- Great warranty and software support lifespan
- Swappable back panels
- Dumbphone-esque focus modes are a nice touch
The Bad
- Upfront cost is comparatively high
- Not as dust- and water-resistant as similarly priced phones
- Power users might find battery life lacking
