For a long time, buying a Fairphone in the US meant either importing it yourself or going through a middleman running a stripped-down operating system you didn’t ask for. That workaround era is over.
Fairphone officially launched the Gen 6+ directly to US consumers this week, priced at $649.99, marking the first time the Dutch repairability-focused phonemaker has sold a device on American soil without someone else standing in the middle. It runs stock Android 16, works on AT&T and T-Mobile, and — true to the brand’s entire identity — comes apart with a single screwdriver.
Why “Finally” Is Doing a Lot of Work in That Headline
Fairphone has been making phones since 2013, built around a simple pitch: your phone shouldn’t become e-waste just because the battery degraded or the screen cracked. For most of that history, though, the US wasn’t part of the plan. Americans who wanted one had to go through Murena, a company that shipped Fairphone hardware running a “de-Googled” version of Android called /e/OS — at a markup, and without the standard Google ecosystem most buyers actually expect.
That workaround is gone now. Fairphone is selling the Gen 6+ directly, with real US carrier support and stock Android, at a price roughly $250 less than what the Murena version cost. For a company built on the idea that a phone should be easy to live with long-term, making the phone itself easier to simply buy feels overdue — and, going by the reception so far, worth the wait.
What’s Actually in the Box
Strip away the sustainability pitch for a second, and the Gen 6+ reads like a solid, unglamorous midrange phone. It’s built around a Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 chipset paired with 12GB of RAM — Fairphone’s first device to hit that RAM figure — and 256GB of UFS 3.1 storage with a microSD slot that supports up to 2TB more. The display is a 6.31-inch LTPO OLED panel running at 120Hz, capable of dropping to 10Hz for battery savings and peaking at 1,400 nits of brightness. Camera-wise, you’re looking at a 50MP main sensor with 10x digital zoom, a 13MP ultrawide, and a 32MP autofocus front camera.
None of that is going to make a flagship buyer look twice, and it’s not supposed to. Fairphone has never really competed on raw spec-sheet bragging rights. It competes on what happens two or three years after you’ve bought the thing.
The Part That Actually Matters: You Can Fix It Yourself
This is where the Gen 6+ stops looking like just another midrange Android phone. Using nothing more than the included T5 Torx screwdriver, owners can replace up to 12 components themselves — the battery, display, all three camera units, the USB-C port, the earpiece, and both rear panels, among others. Fairphone says most of these swaps take under five minutes.
The pricing on replacement parts is where the philosophy really shows up: a new battery runs under $40, a full OLED display assembly is $89.99, and even something as minor as a SIM tray costs under $8. Compare that to the reality of most modern smartphones, where a cracked screen often means either an expensive manufacturer repair or an unofficial third-party shop — and a swollen battery can mean the phone is effectively done. Fairphone’s predecessor, the Fairphone 6, earned a perfect 10/10 repairability score from iFixit, and the Gen 6+ keeps the same modular design intact.
Then there’s the software side of longevity: Fairphone is committing to updates through 2033, a seven-year window that puts it on par with what Google and Samsung now offer on their own flagships — a genuinely notable commitment for a phone at this price point.
Where the Trade-Offs Show Up
Repairability isn’t free, and Fairphone doesn’t pretend otherwise. The 4,415mAh removable battery is smaller than what you’d find in most current-generation midrangers, a direct consequence of building a battery that pops out without adhesive rather than one glued in for maximum capacity. The IP55 rating for dust and water resistance is also a step down from the IP68 ratings increasingly common even on budget phones — removable, serviceable components are inherently harder to seal as tightly as a phone built to be permanently closed.
There’s no included wall charger or cable in the box, either, though Fairphone’s reasoning here is at least consistent with its whole pitch: assume you already own a USB-C charger capable of 30W Power Delivery, and skip the waste of shipping another one.
A Statement as Much as a Product
Fairphone’s CEO framed the launch plainly: the company is building devices meant to be opened, repaired, and kept alive for years, not phones designed around a two-year replacement cycle. That’s not just marketing language — it’s a genuinely different starting assumption than most of the smartphone industry operates from, and one made more pointed by the fact that the US has no equivalent to the EU’s repairability regulations that pushed companies like Apple and Samsung toward offering official self-repair programs in Europe.
Fairphone is entering a market with no regulatory tailwind forcing anyone’s hand.Whether that pitch resonates with American buyers used to subsidized carrier phones and easy annual upgrades remains to be seen. But at a moment when flagship foldables are pushing past $2,000 and component shortages are dragging prices up across the board, a $650 phone built to actually last is, at minimum, a proposition worth taking seriously.
