Fairphone 6+ Review: The Phone Built to Outlive Its Rivals

The Fairphone 6+ is marketed as The Fairphone (Gen 6+) and went on sale on 18 August 2026, primarily in Europe, with the company also selling into the United States for the first time through its own regional storefront. It is not a new generation so much as a component refresh of the Fairphone 6: the chassis, modules and accessories carry over, while the processor, memory and one colour option change. It is priced as an upper-mid-range phone rather than a flagship, and it is aimed squarely at people for whom repairability, fair-material sourcing and longevity outrank camera benchmarks. If you have been waiting for a phone that treats the EU's new repair rules as a floor rather than a ceiling, this is the one.

• Display: 6.31-inch LTPO AMOLED, 1116x2484, adaptive 10-120Hz
• Chip: Snapdragon 7s Gen 4, up from the 7s Gen 3 in the Fairphone 6
• Memory: 12GB LPDDR5, up from 8GB, with 256GB of UFS 3.1 storage and microSD expansion to 2TB
• Rear cameras: 50MP main at f/1.88 with optical and electronic stabilisation, plus a 13MP ultra-wide at f/2.2
• Front camera: 32MP at f/2.0 with autofocus
• Battery: 4,415mAh, user-removable, with 27W charging reaching about half in 30 minutes
• Modularity: 12 user-replaceable modules including battery, display, cameras, USB port and speaker
• Durability: IP55, MIL-STD 810H drop testing
• Materials: around 51 per cent of the device by weight from fair or recycled sources, with Fairtrade gold in the supply chain
• Software: Android 16 at launch, six major OS updates and security patches to 2033, plus a five-year warranty
• Body: 156.57 x 73.28 x 9.6mm, 193g, in Cobalt Blue, Forest Green and Horizon Black

Three things, all internal. The Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 replaces the 7s Gen 3, which is a modest but real step in sustained performance and efficiency rather than a transformation. RAM rises from 8GB to 12GB, which matters more than the chip does for how many apps stay resident and how well the phone ages over an eight-year support window. And Android 16 ships out of the box instead of Android 15. A Cobalt Blue finish joins the range. Everything else, including the 4,415mAh removable battery, the 50MP main camera, the IP55 rating and the module set, is carried straight over from the Fairphone 6. Owners of the 2025 model have no reason to move.

Ownership, in the literal sense. Twelve modules come out with an ordinary screwdriver, spare parts are sold directly, and the battery is genuinely user-removable rather than technically-removable-by-a-technician. The five-year warranty is the longest on any mainstream smartphone sold in Europe, and the six-major-update commitment running to 2033 beats almost everything at this price and matches the longest flagship policies. Fairphone's fair-material sourcing is audited rather than asserted, and the company holds B Corp certification. The 6.31-inch LTPO panel is a proper adaptive 120Hz display, not the fixed 60Hz compromise repairable phones used to carry. It is also refreshingly compact at a time when everything else is enormous.

The Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 is a mid-range chip, and the Fairphone 6+ is not priced like a mid-range phone, because durability and ethical sourcing cost money. If raw performance per pound is your metric, this loses badly to anything from Xiaomi or Nothing. The camera system is competent rather than competitive: a good 50MP main sensor, a modest 13MP ultra-wide, and no telephoto at all, so zoom is a crop. IP55 means splashes and dust, not a dunking, which is a deliberate consequence of a screwdriver-accessible design but still a limitation against IP68 rivals. Charging at 27W is slow by 2026 standards. And the modular chassis is thicker and squarer than fashion currently allows.

Buy the Fairphone 6+ if you intend to keep a phone for five years or more, if you would rather replace a screen yourself than post the handset away, or if supply-chain ethics genuinely factor into your buying. Buy it too if you want a small, light Android phone, because that category has almost vanished. Skip it if you play demanding games, shoot a lot of zoomed photography, or swim with your phone. Skip it if you already own a Fairphone 6, because this is a component refresh rather than a new generation. And skip it if fast charging is non-negotiable.

The repairable-phone category is still thin, so most alternatives to the Fairphone 6+ are ordinary phones that happen to be supported for a long time. Nothing sells a mid-range handset with a stronger chip and a far better camera system but a shorter support promise and no user-serviceable parts. Samsung's cheaper flagships now carry seven-year update commitments, which narrows Fairphone's software advantage considerably. Neither, however, lets you swap a battery on a kitchen table. These are the comparisons worth making before you commit.