I just discovered FairPhone – a phone that is designed with care for the environment and the people who produce it. Exciting.
It’s a fascinating story of a mixed bag of community effort and business development. 25,000 phones have been sold in the first batch and a 2nd batch is on the way with almost 40,000 more people who have shown an interest in buying a phone. The result is a self-sustaining entity that produces competitive phones to the big destructive players. When 60,000 people take interest in such a phone I can’t help but feel that change is here.
Unfortunately at the core of the phone is a very unfair operating system – the heavily Google leaning Android. However in reading through the site it seems that somewhere down the line the phone may support FirefoxOS and Ubuntu for Phones. When that happens I may finally consider(!) a smartphone for a few little comforts it may offer. And when that happens I will be hugely relieved to know that there is an alternative to the mainstream monstrosities.