Not a fair phone
“The Fairphone project now had a bag of money, but no phone”, says Schmidt. “That's why the FP1 was off-the-shelf. Shipping that first model enabled us to make the first steps into understanding the value chain, and to influence it. We managed to introduce two conflict-free minerals in the manufacturing process of the FP1: conflict-free tin used for the soldering paste and conflict-free tantalum used to make capacitors. But that isn't quite enough.

“If you buy an off-the-shelf phone, you also get an off-the-shelf value chain” Schmidt says. “It is much harder to have influence over it. That is the primary reason we are now designing our own phone. The value chain for smartphones is very complex. It's not like a banana. In the sense that, if you want to make sure you are selling a fair banana you check if the plantation operates environmentally sustainable and respects labor rights. But a smartphone involves some 1000 components made all over the world. Take gold for instance, there are 5 or 6 parties involved which you all have to convince to cooperate: to give us insight in how they operate and improve things where necessary.

“At Fairphone we want to, first, make the value chain transparent and secondly improve it. Making sure labor rights are respected, no conflict minerals are used, and have a more honest distribution of the profits and not have them all flow to the West. There are still many improvements to be made. That's why the Fairphone isn't a fair phone yet, it is a phone in the process of becoming fairer”, says Schmidt.

“By embarking on this journey ourselves, we want to show other electronics manufacturers that it is possible. Manufacturers often offer objections like 'it's too expensive', 'consumers aren't interested', or simply 'it isn't possible'. But Fairphone shows that it is possible and that there is customer demand”.