Fairphone is finally releasing its first official handset in the US

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Fairphone has been making sustainable and repairable phones for more than a decade. However, if you wanted to buy one in the US, up until now, you were forced to go through third-party retailers and figure out carrier compatibility on your own. But that changes today with the Fairphone Gen. 6+, the company's first handset to be officially available in the US.

As its name implies, this model is the follow up to last year's Fairphone 6 and it sports some notable upgrades. Not only does it come with a faster Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 chip, it's also the company's first handset to offer 12GB of DDR5 RAM. In front, it sports a 6.3-inch OLED display with a variable 120Hz refresh rate along with 256GB of onboard storage, plus a microSD card slot for even more room if you need it. And in back, the phone features a main camera powered by a 50-megapixel Sony Lytia 700C sensor. Fairphone even created a new Gallery app for photos, which had been a long-running request from previous customers. That's a very solid foundation when you consider that this is a mid-range phone that costs just $650 (or £569 in the UK).

Meanwhile, when it comes to sustainability and ease of repair, similar to previous releases, the Gen. 6+ holds true to the company's goals by being made out of more than 50 percent fair or recycled materials by weight. Furthermore, Fairphone says this model has the smallest carbon dioxide footprint of any of its handsets yet at around 30 kilograms per device, while also claiming that the Gen. 6+ is the only fully e-waste neutral smartphone on sale in the US. And with the previous model having earned a perfect 10 for repairability from iFixit, servicing and maintaining the handset post-purchase should be a breeze.

Additionally, the new cobalt blue colorway for this generation is meant to represent the company's commitment to fairer mining practices, which includes 14 different minerals or materials that have been certified to have been obtained responsible by organizations including the Fair Cobalt Alliance and the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance.

However, perhaps the best thing about the Gen. 6+ is that in addition to a clean install of Android 16 with at least seven years of software updates, the handset will be available directly from Fairphone or on Amazon.com. Furthermore, while it hasn't been certified to work on Verizon, the device will come fully unlocked with proper support for both T-Mobile and AT&T.

Finally, while it won't be out until sometime in Q4 of this year, Fairphone is also planning to release an updated version of its wireless earbuds, the Fairbuds 2. Unfortunately, there aren't a ton of concrete details about those just yet, though we're expecting to see significant redesign that includes longer battery life, improved audio and more.

The Fairphone Gen. 6+ is available for purchase now.