Let's be honest: most of us never consider what sort of materials go into the electronics we use on a daily basis or how they are made. That's not the case with Fairphone, a Dutch company that set out a few years back to design and build a smartphone according to ethical standards.
Specifically, Fairphone wanted to craft a handset that uses no minerals from conflict regions, is manufactured under quality labor conditions and is completely recyclable. The barrier to such a device, naturally, was cash. The company needed to secure at least 5,000 pre-orders before they could move forward with production.
On Tuesday, they reached that milestone.
The hardware itself isn't anything to write home about, but that isn't really the point here. Under the 4.3-inch touchscreen display with Dragontail glass is a quad-core Mediatek processor clocked at 1.2GHz, 1GB of system RAM and 16GB of flash storage.
There's a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera, an 8-megapixel rear camera with stabilization and a 2,000mAh battery that's replaceable. Fairphone supports dual SIM cards and will ship with Android Jelly Bean 4.2, we're told.
The specifications page for the phone notes that headphones and a charger aren't included because they aren't good for the environment. I can fully understand the headphones not being necessary but there's really no way to get around not having a charger for your phone. I guess they expect you to buy one separately or perhaps use one you already own?