 So France you're here So you've already been announced here as the tech lead and software engineer from Fairphone you you were participating in the panel discussion and you're going to talk today about The many ways to make electronic devices more ethical and sustainable and with that I hand over to you the microphone France Thank you very much. Thanks for having me You know me already now I've been introduced I'm from Fairphone we are based in Amsterdam and Together with about a hundred other people I work on making phones that are more sustainable more responsible and more ethical and today I want to Tell you a little bit about how we do how we do that and I used to work on the Android operating system running on Fairphone one and Fairphone two In the last few years I started shifting to the back end I now Developed with my small team microservices that connect different data streams From all over our company So before I start I want to ask Ask you who who knows this who has maybe something like that at home a drawer or a box with Unused and discarded electronic devices Yeah, yeah, we are all part of the problem. This is called e-waste electronic waste and It's a big part of the electronics industry Why is that? You know we already determined today that all of us have a smartphone in our pockets and there is 1.5 billion phones sold each year Although we all have one in our pocket already There's by now more phones on the world than people Also, all these phones are not used for longer than two or three years on average 2.3 years, I think then they are discarded and only 20% of those are Then reused or recycled and if you consider all these three facts together you quickly understand Why e-waste is one of the biggest or maybe the biggest waste stream or grow fastest growing waste stream in the world and This is a problem because All of these phones that are produced take resources We don't really see that we don't really see how precious and limited these resources are but a lot of stuff That is limited goes from out of the earth into these phones under sometimes inhumane working conditions people are exploited the the waste then Poisons the ground and Yes, we do recycling But this is far too limited to actually meet the demand for new devices that are produced each year Let's step back a little bit What is Fairphone? How did we start? Fairphone was started in in 2010 as an awareness campaign initially focusing on conflict minerals in electronic devices and What devices better suited to to showcase this than the smartphones that's so tangible and really in our hands and What we tried to do is Trace the use of these conflict minerals So actually minerals that fund war that fund conflicts in different regions of the world and Trace that through the supply chain to to the phones now pocket and We found out that's impossible That's the supply chain of electronic devices is so vast is so complex and is so opaque That it's it's impossible for an outsider to to look through that So what's the logical step to do? become an insider so in 2013 we We started becoming smartphone manufacturer We launched Fairphone one. That's that was our first device and And tried to connect the threat coming from the minds that we know of that we went to that we talked to and The threat coming from the end consumer the phone in our pocket And and see where these two would meet in the middle Our mission since then has been Showing that it's possible to act more responsibly in there in the choice industry to To also change the system from within as I mentioned earlier already To be part of it and to say and and to see how much can we do? How much is possible already today if we just try and how much can we improve in the future and all of that? We we we try we do by being profitable So actually other companies could follow us without sacrificing their bottom line and we do that with three pillars Our theory of change so we built these phones and we learn what's what's wrong with them We learn what what goes into them now and we use these also as storytelling devices to To raise awareness to show what is still wrong in the industry. What also is also still wrong with our phones They are not perfect. They are just we're striving to make them more ethical step by step second we set an example we We create initiatives for instance a fair trade fair trade gold initiative that other companies can join Or we build a phone that's more repairable by being modular and Lastly we motivate the industry by inviting them to join our our initiatives by showing how it's done and Inviting them. Yeah, we identified four approaches that for impact areas. We call them That we work on the first is fair materials so that goes beyond mere conflict minerals we try to improve the working conditions in these mines and for instance we We created the first smart phone company to integrate fair trade gold in our in our phones similar to the factories We're collaborating with our partners in Asia mostly to improve the working conditions in in the factories and that there's a wide range of improvements health and safety regulations, but also for instance, we're the first company the first smartphone company to To pay a living wage to the factory workers The third is longevity. We want to make the phones last as long as possible That keeps them out of the of the drawer but also out of the landfills and it means that we We use up few of the resources that are so limited and the last one is the polarity When the end of when the phone actually dies at the end we want to it to go back into the cycle I think Mike this morning made a pretty good point about secularity and And we do that by by inviting by having a take-back program and inviting our consumers to send it back and get a cash cashback for that. I Want to focus on longevity today because this is the topic the area of these that I know about most and and so to summarize quickly it we want to keep them as long as possible to exploit for you of the resources and to and Yeah, and sorry and And we have two approaches to do that. One is the modular Repairable approach. What do you see here on the picture is the Fairphone 3? Any end consumer with just a Phillips screwdriver Standard in any toolbox can disassemble the phone and if necessary replace a broken part and the second is the long-term software support because Hardware can break but also software can break and this is the family of the phones that we that we launched so far The our debut was with Fairphone 1 in 2013. We integrated Some fair minerals already and we started selling spare parts therefore 2 is The first phone that we designed ourselves and it is the first modular phone I have really fond memories of that in particular also because I worked on a hardware upgrade for the camera So our model design allowed us to release a new better camera version and the end consumer could Have that shipped home take the screwdriver and replace it and I worked on that from the kernel throughout the entire stack to the UX and Fafon 3 then marked the the launch of our Ambitions into into the wider market. We took the lessons from Fafon 1 and Fafon 2 applied them To Fafon 3 and got a more stable and better suited product for the for the mass market And and finally Fafon 4 is yeah, that's the latest device and Yeah, it's great Let's focus on these two aspects again so the modularity and and the software part some first modularity All phones since Fafon 2 are modular That means that without any tools anyone can just replace the battery But the battery is one of the key parts that break most easily they don't break They just they know the phone doesn't last as long anymore So it's it comes becomes kind of useless you you sit there with an empty battery and yeah, so oh yeah, thank you Great that there's someone showing it If you can just swap out the battery your phone immediately becomes a much longer life because it lasts much longer again You can properly use it as you intended to And then with all the other modules We encapsulate like with each iteration of the modularity We identify modules or components that break most easily or that might be we want to replace And and we turn those into components on those you can really Just take a screwdriver and take it out replace it buy on our webshop and And even upgrade with Fafon 2 and Fafon 3 we had the new cameras for instance and That gave us so that's also something. I'm a proud of all our modular devices have an I fix it score of 10 of 10 I don't know how familiar you are with I fix it but they rate all they disassemble everything they they break it and whatnot and And we were the first smart home brand to have also the only I'm not quite sure To have phones with 10 out of 10 Also recently the French government launched an index That focuses on repair ability but also on the availability and also the price of the spare parts and there we also got a very high rank The the hardware if it doesn't break if it's repairable if you can last long is great It is not much use if the user decides at some point I can't use this phone anymore for two reasons one might be the it doesn't have the features that I want anymore and many of these features are software features So we can do something about it with software support. The second is that Every software every more or less complex software has bugs. I think all of you know that and So so does the firmware and software in our phones and some of these are really really critical We talked about it just before and They make the phone insecure to use so it's crucial that Security vulnerabilities get patched regularly and that's if that doesn't happen anymore then for many users the phone also becomes unusable and And how does this work? We just like with the hardware. We have a huge supply chain complex supply chain, but the what we rely on most is two big entities One is Google they develop the Android operating system that we integrate and The second is the the chipset manufacturer in our case Qualcomm and Qualcomm then takes Operating system from from Google and integrates it with their hardware with their firmware and in the end any smartphone company takes what Google and Qualcomm provide them and And it trades on it with the specific changes to their Hardware to their I don't know the display the fingerprint sensor or the camera that they use so do we and So we also rely on these two For for software support when they stop supporting or providing Security patches for instance, but it becomes very hard for any other entity and especially very hard for a small company like Fairphone to Continue updating it So how do we how do we tackle that? How do we? Provides office support for as long as possible We have three stages and each of these phones Goes through all of the stages first the early bring up We have an OD we work with an ODM model ODM is the original device manufacturer and that's our direct partner and They take the source code from Qualcomm and from Google and do the initial bring up the integration with our hardware and For as long as Qualcomm and still provide security patches and supports the the platform They are also able to to provide support and To to do updates that's security patches, but that's also major Android upgrade upgrades At one point Qualcomm stops providing that and then the ODM also says whoops can't do any more and they and they stop Offering this to us. That is when our in-house team steps in and we take over from there. We've built up some Yeah, quite some experience already with Fairphone 2 and Fairphone 3 and And with the help of the open-source community Lineage or as you might know for instance We keep updating these phones. We keep applying the security patches we still receive those patches to some extent from Qualcomm and to a large extent from Google and Together with open-source community. We integrate those on the phones and we even achieve major version upgrades at some point and There's also another aspect that Google only provides the security patches for a limited amount of time for any Android version. So at some point you don't get patches anymore unless you also upgrade to a major version and that is also what we do for as long as possible at some point that is not possible anymore and And and then the support ends then we still try to provide the security patches, but at one point this Yeah, this doesn't make sense for us anymore and Then the support ends What does this bring us? You might remember the slides from just before that showed five devices That we ever produced and this is the slide containing all the phones that still receive software support even the Fairphone 2 that we launched in 2015 and That that might not continue for so long but Fairphone 3 is definitely Definitely still receives updates until 2024 and for Fairphone 4 we even went one step further we are guaranteeing at least two major Android upgrades and Security updates until 2026 and even longer if we can manage I and the team from Fairphone want to thank you for your attention and If you have any questions Please let me know we Yeah, I hope that you got inspired a little bit to keep your existing phone in your pocket for as long as possible That after all is the most sustainable way of having phones and if not Maybe you get a fair phone Thank you Thank you, France. You're still here around right? I'm around. Yes. We need to move a little in the program So if you have any questions, please Look look up for France. He's he's around ask him those questions. Thank you so much for this inspiring talk