Framework’s modular phone ships to its first early backers

Framework, the company that built its name on a laptop you can take apart with a single screwdriver, has started shipping its first phone to early backers. Units began landing on doorsteps this week, marking the first time the long-promised “modular phone” idea has actually reached paying customers rather than living in a concept render.

The premise is exactly what you’d expect from Framework. Almost everything is meant to come apart and be swapped: the battery pops out by hand, the screen is held in with standard screws, and the cameras, charging port, and even the speaker arrive as discrete modules you can replace yourself with the included driver. Framework publishes the repair guides and sells every part on its own.

What backers are getting

The phone itself is mid-range on paper — a 6.5-inch OLED screen, a capable but not flagship chip, a 4,900mAh battery, and a dual camera system. Framework has never been about winning spec-sheet drag races; the pitch is that you buy it once and keep it alive for the better part of a decade by replacing whatever wears out or falls behind. A cracked screen is a ten-minute fix. A tired battery is a thirty-second swap. When a better camera module ships in two years, you buy that one part instead of a whole new phone.

Early backers — the people who put money down on the crowdfunding campaign more than a year ago — are the first to get hardware, with wider retail availability promised later this year. Prices start at $699 for the base configuration. That’s more than you’d pay for a spec-equivalent phone from a big brand, and that gap is the honest tension at the heart of the whole project: you’re paying a premium up front for the right to not replace the thing for years.

It’s worth being clear-eyed about the risks too. Modular hardware lives or dies on whether the company sticks around to keep selling parts — a repairable phone whose maker has stopped making modules is just a regular phone with extra seams. Framework’s track record with the laptop is genuinely good here, with years of backward-compatible upgrades, but a phone is a harder, more crowded business, and longevity is a promise only time can verify.

For now, though, the simple fact is notable on its own. After years of every major manufacturer gluing batteries down and soldering everything in place, a phone designed from the start to be opened, fixed, and upgraded is finally in real people’s hands. Whether it becomes a movement or a beloved niche, it’s the most interesting thing to happen to phone hardware in a while.