Mobile phones brands and sustainability
Our new tech sustainability rating looks at mobile phone companies’ approaches to repairability and longevity, and also assesses their use of recycled materials.
Can mobile phones be repaired at home?
We looked at how repairable mobile phones are. The highest marks were available for companies that placed repairability at their core, such as Fairphone.
We based our ratings on scores from iFixit, which describes itself as “the world’s largest free repair manual” and assesses whether tech products have been designed with repairability in mind.
iFixit takes devices apart to assess their repairability, considering how easy key components are to replace and whether manufacturers provide repair guides. We collected iFixit’s product scores to calculate a mean average score for each company. We supplemented this data with our own research in a few cases, where a company had yet to have any products rated by iFixit.
Fairphone had an average score of 10/10 on iFixit. Apple and Microsoft had the lowest scores, averaging 2.5, and 2.8.
Our own score for sustainability reflects a company’s approach to repairability as a whole, so is not necessarily a guarantee that all of its products will be repairable. We’d recommend looking up individual products on the iFixit website.
Does the Right to Repair regulation apply to phones?
The UK’s ‘Right to Repair’ bill currently only applies to dishwashers, washing machines, washer-dryers, fridges, televisions and electronic displays, but groups like the Restart Project are campaigning to extend its scope and strengthen its regulation.
But in general, things appear to be travelling in the right direction. In terms of regulation on information for consumers, France has led the way in Europe. Since 2019, it has required companies to display clear information on the repairability of electrical and electronic equipment, via a score out of ten. Groups like Repair.eu and iFixit are campaigning to extend similar laws to the entire EU, and there are similar movements making progress across Australia, Canada, and the US.
You can view a Repair and Reuse Declaration, and find out how to influence your MP on the Restart Project’s website.
Why the focus on home repair?
You might question why we’ve focused so heavily on home repairability, when even poor scorers like Apple and HONOR offer professional authorised repair services.
The first reason is environmental.
Right-to-repair advocates like Louis Rossman argue that many ‘authorised’ technology repairs are pointlessly wasteful. If a single component on a phone’s logic board fails, authorised repair shops often replace the entire board rather than simply soldering on a replacement component. This is a system designed for speed and efficiency, not waste reduction.
The second reason is more social.
Right to repair allows domestic and independent repair businesses to flourish, rather than just centralising profits for multinationals like Apple.
This is particularly pertinent in the Global South.
India, for example, has a rich cultural legacy around repair, reuse, and restoration, with everyday artisans mending everything from shoes to TVs on street corners. A 2024 journal article by Drs George and Baskar asks whether this “generations-old ingenuity around mending, scavenging, and improvising (will) withstand the glossy onslaught of planned obsolescence business models?”.
When Apple restricts access to repair tools and knowledge, or uses software to block replacement parts from working in a device without its permission, it does so at the expense of local communities, waste reduction ambitions, and consumers themselves.