Updated fair phone

Review: The Fairphone (Gen 6 Plus) – the phone for the conscious consumer, now mildly modified

The Fairphone 6 has received a minor update that keeps it relevant.

Published 24 September 2026 - 14:24

If you are considering a Fairphone, it is not really relevant whether there are other phones at the same price that are better. Rather, the question is what you have to give up to choose a Fairphone.

The advantages of the phone are unique. The phone has a lifespan of 7–8 years, not only in terms of system updates but also because spare parts are available throughout that period. You can easily replace broken parts yourself with only a screwdriver as a tool. The metals in the phone are traceable to their source, so it does not contain conflict minerals. Half of the phone's materials by weight are recycled. The people who assemble the phone are guaranteed a living wage. Fairphone offsets all carbon emissions and electronic waste generated by the phone. The list goes on, but this is a phone for people who want to buy a mobile with a clear conscience and use it for a long time.

At the same time, the Dutch company Fairphone is no Apple or Samsung, so it does not have the same resources for design, software or camera development. Again, the question is what you have to compromise on if you choose Fairphone.

Not entirely new

The Fairphone (Gen 6+), or Fairphone 6 Plus as I will call it for the rest of this text, is, as the name suggests, a lightly updated version of last year's Fairphone 6, and the company is straightforward about the differences. The phone has an updated chipset, Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 instead of Gen 3, and 12 GB of RAM instead of 8 GB. It also comes in a new colour option, cobalt blue.

The advantages of being able to take the phone apart yourself, and of nothing inside being secured with glue that has to be melted with a heat gun, come with a couple of drawbacks. It means the manufacturer cannot pack the components as tightly, and the fact that the Fairphone 6 Plus still does not feel particularly bulky or large must be seen as an achievement. Apart from the casing being entirely plastic, the design is quite reminiscent of the iPhone 17 and Galaxy S26. However, you have to accept that the phone does not have the same water resistance as other mobiles in this price range. Its IP55 rating protects against rain, but not against dropping it in water.

High-quality display

The display has slightly thicker black bezels than I am used to, especially at the top and bottom, but that is also the only thing I notice; otherwise, it is top-class. It is an OLED display with a fast refresh rate and good peak brightness in sunlight. You can enable an always-on display so it shows the time even when the screen is off. If I am being picky, I think the automatic brightness tends to set itself too low, while the always-on display shines a little too brightly at night. I would like to be able to schedule it to switch off while I am asleep.

The Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 platform is faster than its predecessor, but still not lightning-fast, and I notice the animations stutter occasionally. It is probably also a matter of system optimisation, because in performance tests the phone is in roughly the same class as Samsung's mid-range Galaxy A37, which seems reasonable. 256 GB of storage does not feel stingy, and there is of course room for a memory card.

Fairphone 6 Plus comes with Android 16, but the company says it is already working hard to update the phone to Android 17. The phone is promised software updates until 2032, which is the same end date as for the Fairphone 6. This is probably because most of the components in the phone are the same and are guaranteed updated drivers until then.

No bloatware

Fairphone keeps the system simple and clean, without any significant changes to Google's user interface. There are few extra apps: a support app from Fairphone and a new gallery app, for those who do not automatically want to use Google Photos for their pictures. The gallery app serves its purpose with a minimum of features, and you can, for example, edit pictures by cropping them and adjusting the colour balance, but not edit them with AI.

A slider on the side of the phone is used to activate Moments, a kind of digital detox mode on the phone. With Moments active, notifications are turned off and you only have access to a limited number of apps, which you choose yourself. If you are not interested in Moments, you can reprogram the button to something else from a list, for example to switch to silent mode or between light and dark display modes.

Because the Moments button is a slider, I never accidentally activate it. However, the volume buttons are positioned opposite the power button with its fingerprint reader, and I end up taking many accidental screenshots when I press the volume button while waking the phone.

The cameras' biggest weakness

The area with the greatest room for improvement is the cameras. On paper, the Fairphone 6 Plus has a camera setup comparable to, for example, the iPhone 17: a main camera with a 1/1.56-inch sensor and an ultra-wide camera with a smaller sensor for a wider field of view. The image results show that there is much more than just the sensor that determines how an image turns out. Both colour reproduction and image sharpness are noticeably worse than on the phones I compare it with, the phone struggles with low-light images, and the sensor's high resolution does not appear to be used when zooming either; an image taken at 2x zoom is no sharper than if it had been enlarged digitally.

I am not saying that the image results from the cameras are catastrophic; they often produce good images, albeit not with the best colour reproduction. In any case, the cameras are worse than those on most other phones you can compare it with, apart from pure budget phones.

Battery life in our screen test is somewhat shorter than we are used to, suggesting that battery optimisation is also something that requires substantial development resources that Fairphone does not have. I would not describe the battery life as outright poor; most of the time, I have no trouble getting through a day on a single charge.

Fairphone itself sells a range of accessories and cases for the phone, and the fact that the phone can be taken apart gives it an advantage here. For example, you can get a back cover with a rubber loop to hold the phone in, or a pocket for payment cards, by replacing the battery cover.

The answer to the question at the beginning of the article, what do I have to give up to get Fairphone's unique benefits, is therefore really only top-class cameras, and perhaps a truly compact form factor if that is what you are looking for. Otherwise, the Fairphone 6 Plus may not be the best at anything in particular, but it does not need to be; it just needs not to be noticeably worse at anything in order to be a good purchase. I think Fairphone has succeeded in that.

Questions and answers

Can you make contactless payments with Fairphone? Absolutely, it has NFC and support for Google Wallet. If you replace the back cover, the alternative back covers also have an NFC coil.

How does the fingerprint reader work? It is located in the power button on the side. If you have bought a rugged case for the phone, there is a cut-out for the fingerprint reader, but I still think the button is harder to use with the case fitted.

How is the speaker sound? A little weak and unbalanced, but not outright bad.