> And it's 325 EUR. For just a little more I can get a Nexus 4 that has really good specs.
So, in fact you just don't put social values before the specs...
I would suggest that this is about social value as much as when all those movie stars bought Toyota Prii.
If you want to help Africa, give money to Doctors Without Borders or UNICEF, don't buy a smartphone and and brag about it on twitter while sipping fair-trade coffee.
Hear, hear TylerE -- well put. It reminds me of "Smug Alert": http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s10e02-smug-al...
The best course of action, of course, is to take the most socially-conscious option for every consumer choice. So, donate to DWB and buy a fairphone -- or, better, stick to your old phone.
The fact that I'd pay 6-700 EUR for a phone that has the performance of a 370 EUR Phone (Nexus 4), way less than the performance of other 6-700 EUR phones on the market, means that I do care about other aspects of the phone more than about performance. I just want something usable, not a brick.
Still, either way you calculate it, the extra price is somewhere between 50 dollars and 50 euros. And since it has a perfectly good warranty in the US, I doubt that's the difference. At face value it really looks like one of those ripoffs that scribble out the $ in the price and put a euro or a pound on top of it.
maybe your standards of "usability" are skewed.