Fairphone 5 review

Squeaky clean Android 13

The Fairphone 5 may not be shining with any proprietary software features or a heavily customizable Android skin, but it beats everyone else in software support. The company promises 5 major Android updates and 8 years of security updates to keep the device relevant as long as possible. Notably, the device launches with Android 13 out of the box, so when Android 14 rolls around for the Fairphone 5, which should be pretty soon, you have four more major updates to go. No other Android manufacturer promises such extended software support.

That's partly possible due to the purpose-built Qualcomm QCM6490 chipset that also comes with extended support from Qualcomm itself. We are a bit concerned about how future-proof 8GB of RAM is with Android gradually becoming more demanding. But more on that later.

The phone is also advertised as bloat-free, which means only the usual set of Google apps is pre-installed. And since the software is vanilla, you can expect rather timely updates from Fairphone. There's not much work to adapt the latest Android version.

Home screen, notification shade, recent apps, app drawer, settings menu

Software is business as usual with the standard lock screen, home screen, app drawer, recent apps and notification shade. But for a more in-depth look at Android 13, we suggest reading the Google Pixel 7 software section as these devices have essentially the same software, aside from a couple of PIxel-exclusive features.

Performance

The Fairphone 5 comes with a rather unique chipset from Qualcomm. It's a purpose-built QCM6490 based on a 6nm node. The SoC has an octa-core CPU with 1 + 3 + 4 configuration and an Adreno 643 GPU clocked at 812 MHz. The CPU consists of 1x 2.7 GHz Cortex-A78 & 3x 2.2 GHz Cortex-A78 & 4x 1.9 GHz Cortex-A55 cores. No other Qualcomm chipset features the same core clusters and clock speeds, but it does get close to the rare Snapdragon 782G, for reference.

The SoC has to work with 256GB of internal storage and 8GB of RAM, and there are no other memory options either. And while the internal storage can be expanded via microSD card, the operating memory may not be very future-proof. It's fine now and maybe even after the next two Android versions, but Android is getting more demanding with each iteration. But since Fairphone guarantees 5 major updates, maybe there's no room for concern.

As you can see, the Fairphone 5 doesn't fare well against competition in the same price range when it comes to raw performance. The QCM6490 is no match for the more powerful Snapdragon 8 series SoCs as well as the Google Tensor G2 chip. It does beat the Snapdragon 778G and the Dimensity 7050 and gets right behind the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2.