The Fairphone Gen 6 Plus is everything an Android phone should be — and no one will buy it

Jerry Hildenbrand / Android AuthorityAdd Android Authority on Google: Every year — or maybe every other year — we all have one thing in common: we shop for a new phone. Phone makers know that even when sales are in a slump, there will be millions of eyeballs looking at what’s out there and what the market has to offer. The flashier and “louder” a product or feature is, the more attention it grabs and the more sales it generates. Even if you didn’t buy a Samsung foldable, you might have bought another Galaxy phone you saw while shopping.Sometimes though, it doesn’t work that way, and the lack of fanfare doesn’t drive all those eyeballs to a product or manufacturer. Fairphone is a great example, and what may well be the best phone out there and the one we should be buying is one that almost none of us will: the Fairphone Gen 6 Plus.Are you interested in the Fairphone Gen 6 Plus?38 votesA more secure version of AndroidJerry Hildenbrand / Android AuthorityThe Fairphone Gen 6 Plus is not the average Android phone, filled with manufacturer and carrier apps, services, and bloat. It will have only the apps Google forces phone makers to include, and a utility called My Fairphone. This means your data isn’t flying the airwaves to any unnecessary place. Samsung or Apple can’t say the same.Things don’t stop there, though. Fairphones have another trick up their sleeves to keep Google — a pesky data-hungry company that wants to know everything — out of the picture completely. Since Android is open-source at its core, alternatives have been built that exclude any and everything Google. /e/OS is one of them, and the Fairphone Gen 6 series was designed to use an easy installer so you can switch yourself./e/OS is recognized as one of the most secure pieces of software available, and if you care about this sort of thing (it’s cool if you don’t, though), you’ll want to take a look at what it has to offer.A better and more humane company Fairphone prides itself on a simple ideal: Sell products “made fair from the inside out.” From the design to the final sale, and all stops in between, everything is done with the idea that people deserve to be treated respectfully and that the bottom line isn’t what’s most important.Now, I admit I can’t read minds and have no idea how strongly the people at Fairphone feel about this, but I can say they’ve been at it for a while and have done everything right so far. A Fairphone Gen 6 Plus was made by people earning a decent wage, in places that don’t require suicide nets on the windows, and aren’t using rare materials mined by kids under slave-like conditions. This matters, and isn’t something other companies can say. When profit is the driving factor, the cheap cobalt mined in the DRC looks awfully inviting.It’s also a phone designed for you to use for a long time. Fairphone supports its products until it’s literally impossible to do so any longer, and we’ve seen some older models get almost a decade of support. You can use a Fairphone Gen 6 Plus until it falls apart, and you’re still not done with it. Designed with repairability and sustainability in mind, parts are readily available, and a couple of screwdrivers and easy-to-find documentation are all you need to fix it yourself. Better yet, this means any decent phone tech can fix it affordably if you don’t want to DIY.I’m not blowing smoke — I’ve owned several Fairphone products and have torn them apart and put them back together in full working order, right on my coffee table with a cold one in my hand. All expensive electronic gadgets need to be made this way.Why it doesn’t matterJerry Hildenbrand / Android AuthorityThis all sounds great, but it won’t make much difference in our buying process, and there are two major reasons: price and availability.You’ll finally be able to buy a Fairphone Gen 6 Plus on Amazon in the U.S., a big change compared to the company’s previous products. It will be fully compatible with T-Mobile and MVNOs that use T-Mobile (you have to use a nano-SIM, not the eSIM) and will be mostly compatible with AT&T right out of the box. That’s huge for a phone nerd who knows what they want and isn’t afraid to buy it on Amazon. It won’t make a difference to those people who need to walk into the T-Mobile store and hold it in their hands, though.The price is the real killer, though. We are conditioned to “know” that a phone with 12GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, and a Snapdragon 7s is midrange and not worth $650 in cash. With no carrier or big manufacturer to jump in and offer trade-ins or special deals, this is what you’ll have to pay, too. $650 is a lot of money, and even if you can afford it, you’ll find a phone with better specs and a better price or a payment plan at Samsung.com.Unless there is a major issue with the product that nobody has seen, the Fairphone Gen 6 Plus sounds like the phone we all needed. It’s just a shame that none of us will be buying it.Fairphone Gen 6 PlusFairphone Gen 6 PlusRepairable • Long update policy • Expandable storageAn easily repairable phone with updates to 2033The Fairphone Gen 6 Plus brings a repairable design, allowing you to remove up to 12 parts with one screwdriver. Expect years of software updates as well, with at least six OS upgrades.Thank you for being part of our community. Read our Comment Policy before posting.