Looking for an eco-friendly smartphone? The Fairphone 3 Plus is here for you

Fairphone 3 Plus
Fairphone 3 Plus (Image credit: Fairphone)

Fairphone has always been at the forefront of environmentally-friendly smartphones, as its devices are made with lots of recycled parts and from conflict-free materials. The company's launched a new handset now, perfect for people who want a green phone (green in eco-credentials, not color).

This new phone is the Fairphone 3 Plus, an improved version of the Fairphone 3 launched roughly a year ago. The front and rear cameras are now higher resolution at 16MP and 48MP respectively, its battery is a tiny bit bigger, and its body is made from a higher proportion of recycled materials than before.

For the most part, the Fairphone 3 Plus is the Fairphone 3 - it has the same 5.85-inch FHD+ LCD display, a rear fingerprint scanner, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a Snapdragon 632 chipset, and 4GB of RAM.

In fact, it's so much the same phone that people who own the Fairphone 3 and want an upgrade don't actually need to buy the new handset - since that handset is easily and openly moddable, Fairphone 3 owners can simply buy the new camera array for a fraction of the price of the new phone, and attach it to the old phone to upgrade.

That's a good move in keeping with the environmentally-conscious nature of Fairphone, and should reduce e-waste a bit.

If you don't own a Fairphone 3 but want the 3 Plus, it's going to go on sale on September 14, though you can pre-order it now from the Fairphone website. The handset costs £425 (roughly $560, AU$775, though Fairphone doesn't sell phones outside Europe).

That's a little more than you'd normally pay for a phone with those specs, but you're also buying the peace of mind that you're helping the planet, which is hard to put a price on.

Tom Bedford
Contributor

Tom Bedford was deputy phones editor on TechRadar until late 2022, having worked his way up from staff writer. Though he specialized in phones and tablets, he also took on other tech like electric scooters, smartwatches, fitness, mobile gaming and more. He is based in London, UK and now works for the entertainment site What To Watch.

He graduated in American Literature and Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. Prior to working on TechRadar, he freelanced in tech, gaming and entertainment, and also spent many years working as a mixologist.