The Fairphone 2 has been announced and goes on sale later this year for a price of €525,This is a crowdfunding project and you can sign up now,its a modular design which means you can take it apart easily and swap parts,seems expensive for a fixer upper but its convenient,this will become a more common idea with many already in the works with other manufacturers.
“The Fairphone 2 is designed with features for increased longevity, including the ability to open up and repair the device yourself. By building our own original design, we’re going deeper into the supply chain to extend our social and environmental impact. “
Some specs are as follows
5” Full HD display Android® 5.1 Lollipop™ Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 801 platform Dual SIM 2 cards in 1 device 8MP camera
60K people bought the first version of the device which is not to be sniffed at.
1. The external case, of which multiple variations are possible
2. The replaceable battery pack
3. The transceiver (or core unit), which is the core of the system. It includes the main chipset, memory and flash storage, modem, radios and antennas, the SIMs and MicroSD card holders, motion sensors and power management. It contains most of the expensive electronics and networking functions.
4. The display unit, which includes the main LCD module, touch sensing driver and a 0.7mm-thick Gorilla® Glass 3 lens.
5. The receiver unit, which includes the receiver, headset connector, front-facing camera, noise-cancelling microphone, ambient light and proximity sensor and the notification LED.
6. The rear camera unit, which includes the rear camera and flash.
7. The speaker unit, which includes the speaker, vibration mechanism, main microphone and USB connector.
These subsystems (or units) have been split along functional lines, taking into account the complexity of engineering them, as well as the cost of replacement. For instance, we did not include any functionality in the display unit that was not part of the LCD. This way, if you need to replace your display, you won’t have to throw away any other components that are still functional.
It is important to note that all of the electromechanical components are easily replaceable – none are soldered, apart from the microphones (which need to be). The buttons, which are part of the transceiver, sit on flexible printed circuits (FPCs) that are spring-connected to the main board. The units themselves are also built in a modular way to enable refurbishment.