The Fairphone 2 is launching only in select European countries. The company says it plans to bring the device to other countries in 2016.

AMSTERDAM—With more and more similarly priced and specced Android smartphones arriving on the market, unique selling points are becoming increasingly rare. There's nothing bad about selling a decent phone with an attractive price tag, but it's always more interesting to take a look at something that stands out.

You don't have to add a plethora of unnecessary features or keep pumping the display resolution up, though. You can also stand out by changing the way a device is manufactured and sold. That's what Dutch startup Fairphone has been doing for a while now.

Back in 2013, it raised €7.5 million (£5.5 million) for its first "ethically sourced smartphone," in which it tried to minimise the usage of conflict minerals, i.e. those extracted from conflict zones, mostly in Africa. The phone was built and designed by an ODM manufacturer in China.

"The proposition was mostly about the supply chain and not about the phone [itself]," Fairphone CEO Bas van Abel told Ars Technica UK. "The phone just needed to work [as well as any other smartphone]."

Earlier this year, Fairphone announced the Fairphone 2, which has been designed by the company from scratch and has a unique feature: the users can (and are encouraged to) easily disassemble the phone themselves, swap or upgrade parts, and keep using the device longer than any other similar smartphone. In a word, it is modular.

Screwdriver at the ready

Priced at €525 (£390), the Fairphone 2 has a projected life span of five years, during which customers will be able to buy spare parts to fix any issues, as well as receive software updates. The company says it's on schedule to begin mass production in November, and to ship out devices soon after that (the website says December 2015).

The device runs Android 5.1 on some mid-level hardware that includes a Snapdragon 801 SoC, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of internal storage, 8MP f/2.2 rear-facing camera, 2420mAh battery and 5-inch Full HD LCD display covered by Gorilla Glass 3. The phone has two micro SIM card slots and a micro SD expansion slot. The main thing about the phone, however, is its modular nature.

Andrii Degeler

Andrii Degeler

Andrii Degeler

Andrii Degeler

Andrii Degeler

Andrii Degeler

Andrii Degeler

Andrii Degeler

Andrii Degeler

Andrii Degeler

Andrii Degeler

The smartphone consists of seven major building blocks: the back cover, removable battery, display assembly, main chassis, receiver module, rear camera module, and speaker module. Positioned this way, the components that break most often, like the screen, are isolated for better repairability.

In addition to swappable blocks, you can even change things inside the modules: for example, a mic or a speaker. They are press-fit, not glued, and can be extracted with simple tools.

At the time of publishing, Fairphone's website didn't list any modules for the Fairphone 2, but there are some prices for Fairphone 1 spare parts: a new battery costs €18.15 (£13), display assembly €71.50 (£53), motherboard €118.65 (£87), etc.