Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of sustainable Android smartphones. I'm David Imel, and today we're talking to Fairphone CEO Raymond van Eck. Now, Fairphone is a Dutch electronics company. They're most well known for their highly repairable smartphones like the Fairphone 6 Plus, which just launched in the US, but they've also got things like sustainable and replaceable earbuds and headphones. They've just released this phone in the United States. It's their first phone in the US market, and I wanted to talk to Raymond a little bit about how that's going and their plans for the future.
But first, here's what's happening on The Verge today. This is 90 seconds on the Verge for Monday, August 31st, 2026. Today is Tim Cook's last day as the CEO of Apple. Tomorrow, he'll be passing the baton to John Turnis, and Cook will transition to executive chairman of Apple's board of directors. In a statement to the company, Cook reminisced on his time at Apple and expressed gratitude for the people he worked with. While Cook was focused on growing the company's supply chain to one of the most impressive on the planet, it will be pretty exciting to see what a product-focused Apple looks like in the coming years. Bloomberg is also reporting that longtime Apple executive Phil Schiller is stepping down from his role as head of App Store and Apple events, but will be staying with the company to continue working on unspecified initiatives.
Next up, Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell have filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for the Northern District of California seeking damages for tens of thousands of copyrighted works. The companies are asking for up to $150,000 per work, plus up to $25,000 for each instance of copyright data being stripped. The damages could amount to several billion if Sony and Warner are awarded the maximum amount. And finally, MapQuest downloads have surged after it refused to change the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America following an executive order on August 27th. Google Maps officially changed the name over the weekend, and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum says Apple may soon follow suit. In a tweet, MapQuest said, "We're not changing the name of Lake Ontario. Name it whatever you want at your leisure." You can read more at theverge.com. That's 90 seconds on the Verge from Monday, August 31st, 2026.
Raymond van Eck, welcome to the Vergecast.
Thanks, David. Happy to be here.
So, first off, for people that do not know Fairphone, you are the CEO of Fairphone.
Can you explain the mission of the brand here?
Yeah. Well, Fairphone is a Dutch tech company, and we are doing something that was long thought to be nearly impossible, right? So, which is building high-performance modular smartphones that can last for an extremely long time. So we have a five-year hardware warranty, which is also in the US, but also seven to eight years of software support, and it's all done so you can hold on to your device for as much and as long as possible. And we also focus on ethically sourced materials and fair-wage labor for the people working on the Fairphone. And to give you, let's say, a quick example of what that looks like, you know, if your phone battery died or you cracked the screen, you know, these things happen to all of us. Yeah. Then instead of paying a lot to someone who needs to fix your device and you need to wait around while that person does that, you can just repair it yourself, right? So you can order the spare part on fairphone.com, and let's say $30, and a few minutes later you have a perfectly working device done on your kitchen table with a single screwdriver. And you know, that's what we do, and that's what we're pushing right now as well into the US to be the norm.
Yeah. So you just entered the US with the Fairphone 6 Plus. I've got one here in this very nice purple color. How has the launch in the US gone, and what has that process been like for you guys? Because it's famously very difficult to get phones launched in the United States.
Yeah, well, it's going actually quite well. So we have a lot of interest both from media as well as from customers, and we are shipping out the first orders. So that's super nice. Yeah, so you know, on August 18th we launched our latest and greatest. That's the 6 Plus, right? And well, we have officially entered the US smartphone market now as well, after doing the audio last year. And basically we are tapping into this growing right-to-repair movement. So you know, I would say US customers as well, right, they got used to the planned obsolescence and the expensive upgrades which you have on phones. And at the same time you have this global memory shortage which is also causing a lot of market polarization, and you also see, let's say, shrinkflation also in the mid-range Android market where we're in. And basically with that we thought, okay, it's now time to give an alternative, especially with the right-to-repair movement reaching momentum through all the states. So that created for us a perfect environment to do our official entry in the US market. And we do that step by step because we also look closely at what happened on the market before and took notes, I would say. So first of all, you can order the Fairphone on our website fairphone.com as well as through Amazon, and we are slowly but surely building that out. We are talking to MVNOs and MNOs as well, and actually building up the momentum there.
Do you think that you're going to be able to get on store shelves in the United States, or is that a whole separate process? It's very difficult.
It's a process that's also connected obviously to the bigger retailers as well as to the MNOs, and we're also talking to the retailers and MNO parties, of course, to be on that shelf space. And that will be a process in due time that we need to succeed on.
So, what are all the repairable components in the Fairphone? Because I'm sure that there are certain pieces that people tend to break more often than others, but maybe there might be something that is a little less common to break. Like, what is everything you can actually replace in this thing?
Well, I think you of all people, David, know, right? I think you've told me that you switched a camera the other day as well. So first of all, you have the cameras here, which you can switch, but also things that people easily tend to break, right? The screen. The screen is also a matter of a few minutes that you can just swap out. Same goes for the battery, but also PCBs. But also one thing that is really much overlooked by a lot of people, and it's easily breakable because people try to harass it all the time, is the USB-C port, which is also just in a blink of an eye you can just swap that and have a brand new one. And the interesting part, for instance, it also makes people get used to the fact that they can switch and use these modular items, but they also get used to the fact that it's okay to open the device.
Hey, if you can't open it, you don't own it.
Right. I think something that a lot of people mix up between like Fairphone and maybe some other companies is a lot of people expect that these phones are going to be upgradable. Are there any upgradable parts in these where if you have like say an older Fairphone you can put some of the newer components in or things like that, or is it mostly just made to be repairable?
It's now mostly made to be repairable. In the past, we had for instance camera upgrades when that still was a thing, I would say, from the Fairphone 3 to the 3 Plus. But nowadays, you know, we would love to be able to have something like that on offer. But the current hardware upgrades also on the 6 Plus are not elements which are simple to play with and to move between devices. So for now, these will remain two separate phones, for instance the 6 and the 6 Plus, with separate spec sheets, though with a lot of shared components.
So a lot of people in my demographic at least are thinking a lot more about sustainability. They're thinking about, you know, moving away from Google and Apple and trying to buy a phone from a company that they actually want to support. How has the reception been in the United States, and are you seeing like a lot of momentum here?
If you look to the US, right, also on our social media channels, in our community, etc., there are a lot of people living indeed in the US and ask us like, okay, when do you come to the US? When will I be able to at least have an Android alternative to for instance also to Google and Samsung, etc.? Yeah, and of course it's needless to say that those people are very happy with the fact that we now entered the US market. But it's also interesting to see for instance in the demographic of the ordering process. So we see orders coming in from across the US. So it's not particular, I don't know, sustainability California thing or whatever what you have. We see it across the state, and that's interesting as well because that's actually quite parallel to what we see in Europe where we're growing a lot. 80% of the Fairphone 6 buyers for instance are new to the brand of Fairphone, so we're more and more tapping into that mainstream segment as well, stepping out more and more out of this niche as you may.
Is there an age range like globally that you guys are seeing more particularly of? Because at least people in my demographic age range, they're talking a lot more about sustainability, being able to hold on to their phone for a longer period of time.
We see people buying it across all age groups. But more and more we see also people that are a little bit more younger, Gen Z, buying our phones or at least also have a particular interest in it. Not only on the sustainability side, but again also on the fact that it's self-repairable. And also they understand more and more the fact that when you buy a Fairphone you're not only buying it for the specs at that moment, you're also buying it for let's say the total cost of ownership, which sounds quite technical, but in the end people start to understand that, you know, again, if you can swap your battery for let's say $39.99 or for $90 your screen, that is also attractive to people.
Something that I found very interesting on the last Fairphone that I feel like kind of plays into the demographic that I exist in is this kind of smart switch on the side that puts it into, I don't want to say a dumb phone mode, but it kind of is like a focused dumb phone mode. What was the mentality behind that? Like what made you guys want to have a hardware switch for that?
