Social enterprise company, Fairphone, has introduced a set of new modules to its Fairphone 2 Android-based smartphone that is intended to let you repair and upgrade the device’s front and rear cameras. The new upgrade features for Fairphone 2 include a 12-megapixel Omnivision OV12870 camera with dual flash that costs €45 (approximately $54) and a 5-megapixel Omnvision OV5670 front camera for €30 ($36), which replace both the 8-megapixel Omnvision OV8865 rear camera and the 2-megapixel Omnvision OV2685 front shooter that initially shipped with the phone. Keep in mind that while each module is priced separately, you can still purchase them as a bundle for €70 ($83).
Launched in October 2015 as the world’s first ethically-sourced smartphone, according to the Amsterdam-based company, the Fairphone 2 sports a 5-inch IPS display with a resolution of 1920 x 1080. Under the hood, the device is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 801 quad-core system on chip while an Adreno 330 GPU fuels the phone’s graphics performance. Other key features of the handset inside include 2GB of LPDDR3 RAM and 32GB of eMMC 5.0 internal storage. The modular phone also packs a 2,420mAh battery and two SIM card slots. The Fairphone 2 shipped with Android 5.1 Lollipop back when it launched.
On top of camera modules, the phone also has separate modules for the battery, screen and speaker meant to help you replace or repair the Fairphone 2 whenever necessary. However, the company has yet to announce upgrades for the other modules, save for the camera. Fairphone relaunched the phone in October of last year with removable back covers that you can customize, a major departure from the previous limitation that provides only two option colors for the cover: transparent and black. The back covers were then expanded to include a wide variety of color choices such as Red, Indigo, Turquoise, and White. Around the same time, the Dutch company also suggested that it would offer components to let you upgrade the device’s rear facing camera at first and then the other parts later. The broader goal is to make the Fairphone 2 a completely modular smartphone, though it remains to be seen what other components of the modular device will get upgrade features in the future.