The ONLY Phone With A Removable Battery Worth Buying Right Now

Why The Fairphone 6 Is Our Pick

Remember when replacing a phone battery took about 20 seconds?

You removed the plastic cover, pulled out the old battery and dropped in a new one. Done.

Today, replacing an iPhone, Pixel or Galaxy battery usually involves adhesive, heat, specialist tools and a repair appointment. You might also need to surrender your phone for several days.

The Fairphone 6 takes a different approach.

Its battery is held in place with screws rather than glue. Remove the rear cover, undo the screws, disconnect the old battery and fit the new one. According to iFixit, the entire job can be completed in a few minutes.

That sounds like a small feature. Over the full life of a phone, it is anything but.

Read our full Fairphone 6 guide, including its price, specifications and modular design →

The Fairphone 6 At A Glance

A New Battery Can Add Years To A Phone’s Life

The battery is usually one of the first parts of a phone to wear out.

After three or four years, the processor still works. Your apps still open. The display is probably fine. But the battery no longer lasts through the day, charging becomes more frequent and the phone starts feeling unreliable.

That is when many people replace the whole device.

With the Fairphone 6, you can buy a replacement battery for around €40 and fit it yourself. You don’t have to pay labour costs, post the phone to a repair centre or remove your personal data from the device.

That gives the Fairphone 6 a very different ownership model.

You might pay around £500 for the phone today, use it for three or four years, replace the battery and continue using it for another three years.

Spread across seven years, a £500 phone works out at just over £71 a year. Even after adding a replacement battery, it can be far cheaper than buying a new £700 to £1,000 phone every three years.

That is the real value proposition here.

It Isn’t Just The Battery You Can Replace

The Fairphone 6 has 12 replaceable parts.

These include:

• Battery
• OLED display
• USB-C charging port
• Main rear camera
• Ultrawide camera
• Front camera and earpiece
• Loudspeaker
• Top unit
• SIM and microSD tray
• Rear covers

This matters because battery wear isn’t the only thing that kills otherwise usable phones.

USB-C ports become loose. Screens crack. Speakers fail. Camera stabilisation systems develop faults. On many phones, a single damaged component can lead to an expensive repair quote or write-off.

Fairphone sells these parts separately and publishes repair instructions. The replacement USB-C unit costs around €20, while a new display costs around €90.

Those prices are far lower than the typical repair bill for a sealed flagship phone.

iFixit gave the Fairphone 6 a perfect 10/10 repairability score, praising its lack of glue, accessible components and modular charging port.

There is an important distinction, though.

The Fairphone is repairable, but it isn’t fully upgradeable. You can replace a broken camera with an equivalent part, but Fairphone hasn’t promised that future processors or upgraded camera modules will work inside it.

You are buying easier maintenance, not a smartphone version of a custom PC.

Software Support Matches The Repairable Hardware

A replaceable battery wouldn’t mean much if Android support ended after three years.

Fairphone promises software support until at least 2033. That includes at least seven Android version upgrades and a further year of security coverage.

The phone launched with Android 15 and received Android 16 in March 2026. Fairphone plans to release monthly security patches for roughly the first three years, followed by updates every two months from June 2028 until support ends.

Replacement parts are also promised until at least 2033.

That combination is what separates the Fairphone 6 from most other repairable phones:

• The battery can be replaced
• Other commonly damaged parts can be replaced
• Software support runs for eight years
• Spare parts should remain available throughout that period
• The registered warranty lasts five years

Plenty of phones now have longer update policies. Very few pair those policies with hardware designed to survive for the same amount of time.

It Is Also A Properly Good Mid-Range Phone

Earlier Fairphone models required you to accept some fairly large hardware compromises.

The Fairphone 6 is much easier to recommend as an everyday phone.

Its 6.31-inch LTPO OLED display has an adaptive refresh rate between 10Hz and 120Hz. It is sharp, smooth and reaches 1,400 nits at peak brightness.

The Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 and 8GB of RAM are more than capable of running normal Android apps, browsing, streaming, maps, banking and casual games. It isn’t a gaming flagship, but it doesn’t need to be.

You also get 256GB of storage as standard and a dedicated microSD slot supporting cards up to 2TB.

That last feature is almost as rare as the removable battery. Apple, Google and Samsung would rather charge you hundreds more for additional internal storage. Fairphone lets you add it later with an inexpensive memory card.

The 50MP main camera uses a Sony Lytia 700C sensor with optical image stabilisation. It won’t beat a similarly priced Pixel for automatic photography, but it is perfectly usable and far better than the cameras used on some older Fairphone models.

This isn’t a basic phone with one unusual trick. It is a decent mid-range Android phone that happens to be repairable.

What About Samsung’s Removable-Battery Phones?

The Samsung Galaxy XCover7 Pro also has a removable battery, and its support period runs until 2032.

It is a sound option for building sites, warehouses, field workers and businesses that need rugged phones. It has stronger water resistance, a toughened body and support for Samsung DeX.

But it is also enormous.

The XCover7 Pro weighs 240g, measures 10.2mm thick and looks like workplace equipment. That is because it basically is. Samsung markets the XCover range primarily towards businesses and workers operating in difficult environments.

The Fairphone 6 weighs 191.4g and has a smaller 6.31-inch display. It looks and feels much closer to a conventional consumer phone.

If you need a rugged work phone, buy the Samsung. If you want a repairable phone for normal everyday use, I’d choose the Fairphone.

What About The HMD Skyline?

The HMD Skyline has a replaceable battery, wireless charging and a more ambitious camera system.

It also launched with a promise of only two major Android upgrades.

That short update policy makes it difficult to recommend as a phone bought specifically for long-term ownership. There is little point fitting a fresh battery after four years if the software support is already ending.

The Fairphone 6’s battery might be the headline feature, but the 2033 support promise is what makes that battery genuinely useful.

The Fairphone 6 Isn’t Perfect

There are compromises.

The phone has IP55 water resistance, meaning it can cope with rain and water jets but is not designed to survive submersion. An IP68 iPhone, Pixel or Galaxy provides better protection around water.

There is no wireless charging, wired charging stops at 30W and the USB-C port operates at USB 2.0 speeds.

The Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 is a mid-range processor rather than a flagship chip. The camera is good enough, but a Pixel will produce better point-and-shoot results for similar money.

Fairphone also doesn’t include a charger or cable in the box.

If you replace your phone every two years and care mostly about camera quality or gaming speed, the Fairphone 6 probably won’t change your mind.

But that isn’t who this phone is for.

The Value Is In What You Don’t Have To Replace

Most manufacturers sell longevity as a software-update number.

Seven years sounds good on a specifications page. The problem is that a sealed battery may be heavily degraded long before those seven years are up. A damaged charging port or cracked display can also make repairing the phone uneconomical.

Fairphone has joined the hardware and software sides together.

The battery can be changed. The charging port can be replaced. The display can be removed without cutting through glue. The software remains supported until 2033, and Fairphone says it will continue selling parts throughout that period.

That gives the phone a realistic chance of lasting for the full support window.

It might not offer the most impressive camera or processor for its initial price. But if you are still using it after six or seven years, the day-one specifications become far less important than the fact that the phone still works.

Should You Buy The Fairphone 6?

The Fairphone 6 is the removable-battery phone I would buy right now.

Not because it is literally the only phone with this feature. It isn’t. Samsung has rugged models, HMD has repairable phones and several specialist manufacturers serve smaller markets.

The Fairphone is the one where the entire package makes the most sense because it’s backed up by excellent, Apple-like levels of software support.

It is comfortable enough for normal daily use, powerful enough for the vast majority of Android owners and supported for long enough to make replacing the battery worthwhile.

Buy it if you want one phone that can last for years, rather than another sealed device designed around its next upgrade.

See the Fairphone 6’s full specifications, price, cameras, repairable parts and buying advice →