Early Impressions: Teracube 2e

Feb 10, 2021 reviews phone
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I ordered the Teracube 2e from their Indiegogo campaign, and it has just arrived!

I won't spend too much time going over the specs, because those have been discussed at many other places, at length. The main thing is, will it work for my use cases? My phone that I've had since 2017 (The Xiaomi MI A1) has been serving me well, despite still being on Android 9, but the battery has started to lose some charging capacity.

The Teracube 2e does not come with a charging cable. Does not come with headphones. Just with a case, which seems serviceable. It has an earthly pattern to it, and that presumably comes from that fact the case is 100% recycled and biodegradable material

So, real quick then; the benefits to this new phone:

  • LTE bands (The Xiaomi didn't support LTE for what Bell uses in Canada)
  • NFC
  • 4-year warranty (This warranty is pretty impressive)
  • Newer Android version. It came with Android 10, with 11 expected to come later, perhaps this summer.

Downsides and concerns:

  • The CPU is actually a smidge SLOWER than the Xiaomi MI A1. The MediaTek CPU scores 149/849 on Geekbench Single/multi-thread, compared to the Snapdragon 625 inside the MI A1 scoring 170/999. Neither one is going to play the biggest, most-demanding games that Android has to offer, but they wouldn't be this inexpensive if they did. So far at least, the new phone doesn't FEEL any slower in any applications. It's possible that improvements in Android 10 will cancel most of this out.

    • Testing with JetStream 2 only seems to widen the gap between them

  • Thickness: The phone is a bit thicker than my previous. It's noticeably chunky. This is probably due to the construction (the phone is built and assembled with all screws and not glue, to make it more repairable). The case doesn't add much to it, it's the phone itself.

  • Not a concern but something I'll have to get used to: The 'BACK' button at the bottom has gone back to the (historically) correct place on the left, as opposed to how Samsung and Xiaomi had it on the right side of the HOME button.

    • UPDATE: This can be changed in Settings, under 'Display'->'Navigation Bar'

  • After using it for several days, I've noticed some Bluetooth choppiness and disconnects at ranges > 10m. Maybe Bluetooth is weaker on this phone than my last. Will update if I discover more.