Crosscall announced this week that it is offering a 3-year warranty to its customers in all the African countries where their phones are sold. The 3-year warranty applies to both its Core range and future products.
The Core range includes 3 smartphones and the first Crosscall tablet. The latter product, the Core T-4, is a rugged, high-performance, all terrain, water-resistant tablet which was specifically designed for industry use and which conforms to a range of military tests. One of its biggest benefits is extensive standby battery time of more than 750 hours.
In Africa, Crosscall mobile phones are available in South Africa, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Tunisia, DRC and Ghana.
“The majority of mobile phone brands come with a one-year limited warranty which typically only covers manufacturing defects and hardware malfunctions. Mobile phones are typically hard to repair and it’s almost impossible to replace the battery in most models. The result is that mobile phone users tend to replace their device every 12 – 24 months,” the company said in a media statement.
Crosscall cited a 2017 Greenpeace report titled ‘From smart to senseless: the global impact of 10 years of smartphones,’ which said: “Major smartphone manufacturers are increasingly making product design decisions that take away an individual’s ability to replace the battery or add more memory. This greatly reduces the lifespan of the product and drives demand for new products and maximum profit.”
The Greenpeace report called for a new business model in which smartphone manufacturers take into account the impacts their popular devices are having on our planet, and the desire of consumers to slow down the rate of phones they go through in a decade.
The report added that, “Manufacturers should measure their innovation not by fewer millimetres and more megapixels, but by designing devices to last, by making them easily repairable and upgradable, and using components and materials that can be safely reused again and again to make new phones.”
Answering the challenge
One mobile phone manufacturer to answer this challenge was Crosscall. The French mobile phone company is one of the first manufacturers to take a different stance on the typical one-year warranty offer. The company, which has specialised in developing durable products with the latest enhanced designs – all without making any compromises – offers an unprecedented 3-year warranty on its Core product range.
For the past 11 years the company has accumulated significant expertise around the manufacture of high quality mobile devices for outdoor usage. From the outset, durability has been the cornerstone of Crosscall’s strategy with a particular focus on resistance, waterproofing and autonomy. In order to ensure this promise its products undergo far more rigorous testing than is typically found among its competitors.
The 3-year warranty, said Julien Fouriot, Crosscall’s African sales director, represents the first step in the company’s mission to discard a consumerist mobile market and move towards a market based on user’s needs and on more durable products.
“The reality is that the mobile phone market will never be the most eco-friendly industry,” he conceded. “Despite this, the industry cannot afford to neglect the obvious urgency to save the planet’s resources.”
Crosscall’s foundational value is to answer user needs while at the same respecting user expectations. What this ensures, said Fouriot, is a focus on product durability while rejecting all planned obsolescence. This is also the company’s starting point in terms of developing a solution to the environmental issues created by the mobile phone industry.
Tried and tested
Independent laboratory tests conducted on Crosscall’s Trekker-X4 smartphone concluded that the device had a battery life of 39 months. “Essentially, what this means is that for 39 months users are assured that their battery will not lose performance. This has significant implications for the B2B market as it means that with more durable mobile devices businesses don’t need to replace their mobile fleet as regularly – which means lower costs for the business.”
In 2019, Crosscall was selected by SNCF, a French rail company, to equip their train and station employees with Trekker-X4 mobile smartphones. The tender was awarded based on the results of intense testing by an independent laboratory. The three criteria that determined the result of the tender were battery autonomy, product robustness, and a device life expectancy of 39 months.
Crosscal requested the same laboratory to conduct the identical testing protocol on its new product range. The laboratory’s report stated all the products had a life expectancy of 36 to 39 months under normal conditions of use. The 3- year guarantee, said Fouriot, has been implemented based on the results of this laboratory testing.
He added that even though Crosscall’s devices are more expensive at the outset than classic smartphones, the total cost of ownership over the lifespan of the device is lower as they last longer than their classic counterparts due to a significantly longer battery life and the fact that there is less breakage.
