Advice on issues with my Teracube 2e

Teracube 2e
#1

Hi, I’ve had my 2e for a while, it’s out of warranty I’m sure. Generally, it’s been an OK experience – the battery doesn’t last as long as my old Sony Xperia X2A Ultra (up to 11 days!), and the camera is certainly quite bogus in comparison. We’re on AT&T in the States, that could be a factor. I’ve long had intermittent issues with the screen going blank until a call is ended, which doesn’t help when you are asked to press keys to navigate a menu. It’s running Android 11; I tried updating to 13 and that bricked the phone and I had to revert.

One problem which has gotten much worse recently is “ghost fingers”: things being pressed and the phone doing things by itself without me even touching it. This seems to be due to some combination of low battery (actually can happen at 80% so not that low), ambient heat/humidity, and me using the phone (calling a friend, sending a text, opening a webpage, etc.) When it really goes nuts all I can do is hold down the power button until it restarts or shuts down.

Does this sound familiar? Is there a known fix or is it just time to get a new phone?

Thanks for reading me!

#2

Been a LONG time since I’ve been on Android 11 since it’s not supported and Android 16 is a lot better overall even if it might end up wiping the phone once to get there but, but going from memory…
I believe that blank screen during calls is a setting in the phone app where the proximity sensor tries to guess if the phone might be held against a face and it tends to be pretty terrible about detecting properly.
Upgrading to 13 will likely force you to factory reset and wipe data, but if it’s synced to the cloud then it might restore most of your settings and apps afterwards. Updating to 14, 15, and 16 should be fairly successful unless you try to simplify things by disabling encryption and/or fingerprint, at which point it will likely force you to factory reset. Honestly, if you’re able to jump straight from 11 to 16, I’d try to do that - it’ll almost certainly do a wipe, but it cuts out 2-5 hours of upgrades and reboots and a likely first-stage wipe.
I think on 10 and 11, I sometimes had less reliable touch that seemed possessed, but it hasn’t happened on 13-16 that I can recall.