Fairphone 1: Still going strong after 13 years

November brings the familiar hum of the electronics industry gearing up for its biggest ritual: Black Friday. Billboards flash with deep discounts, countdown timers tick away in crowded inboxes, and consumers are told that last year’s pocket companion is suddenly outdated and ready for the bin.

Yet while the tech world scrambles to push new gadgets into millions of carts, we have been pioneering a quiet counter-movement across Europe over the last 13 years. That’s why, while the annual shopping frenzy insists that consumer electronics have a two-year shelf life, you can still find the very phone that started it all: the Fairphone 1.

Here are two stories from the Fairphone community where the Fairphone 1 is still very much in use, more than a decade after launch. It turns out that when a smartphone is designed around care, modularity, and repairability, it does more than withstand the test of time. It outlasts the hype.

“If you can’t open it, you don’t own it.”

Dutch Linux enthusiast Lidwein bought the Fairphone 1 as her first smartphone after reading about the project in de Volkskrant. What caught her eye wasn’t flashy specs; it was ethics and ownership.

“Just before the Fairphone 1 should be delivered, we got an email: ‘Should we ask the workers for overtime and deliver on schedule, or do you wish us to delay the delivery?’ Luckily, everybody like me said, ‘No overtime.' That confirmed for me that I had chosen the right phone,” Lidwein recalls.

For Lidwien, owning technology means having the agency to fix it. Across 12 years of ownership, her Fairphone 1 only ever needed two replacement batteries. When she moved to newer Fairphones over the years, eventually becoming a dedicated Fairphone Angel in 2017 to help local community members diagnose and swap spare parts, she followed a strict household rule: never buy a new device without passing the older one along to be used. Nothing goes into a drawer. 

Today, her original Fairphone 1 sits plugged in on a shelf, quietly running BOINC, a distributed computing platform that uses spare processor capacity for global scientific research. Her device runs continuous calculations dedicated to healthcare research, including cancer mapping, Zika, and Ebola studies.

“Why put it in a drawer or let it recycle?” Lidwien says. “Just try and see if it’s still working.”

Surviving seven years of daily life (and a dip in water)

Across the border in Munich, Anke shares that same quiet defiance against planned obsolescence. Like Lidwien, the Fairphone 1 was her first step into the smartphone era.

“I love my Fairphone 1,” Anke smiles. “It’s a first edition. It wasn’t a fake, it wasn't a scam. It came in a nice box that said, ‘Here’s your Fairphone’. I loved that. Very personal and friendly.”

Anke isn’t a self-described tech expert, nor is she glued to screens. She doesn't download endless apps, preferring simple web browsing, calls, and essentials. For seven straight years, from early 2014 until 2021, the Fairphone 1 was her sole daily phone.

It survived daily wear, one single battery swap after several years, and even an accidental swim. When it fell into water, Anke didn't toss it in the bin though. Because the design was modular, she simply took the phone apart, dried the components thoroughly, reassembled it, and turned it back on.

Anke finally upgraded to a Fairphone 4 when 3G networks began phasing out in Europe and older software made messaging tricky. But she couldn’t bear to part with her OG Fairphone. Today, her Fairphone 1 serves as a dedicated personal audio and podcast streaming player over home Wi-Fi. Twelve years on, its hardware and screen still work without a hitch.

The one you choose to keep

In an industry obsessed with annual upgrade cycles, thinner frames, and fake innovation, stories like Lidwien’s and Anke’s represent a quiet counterculture. Neither considers themselves radical. They simply believe that products should be built honestly, that people deserve fair working conditions, and that good tools are worth caring for.

As the Fairphone community has grown from the original batch of pre-orders to over a million devices worldwide, that founding principle remains unchanged: the most sustainable phone isn't just the one made from better materials. It’s the one that stays in your hands the longest. This Black Friday, choose the one that lasts. Choose the one that keeps.