Prospective New Customer(s)

General
#1

Hi,

I’ve been on a long, arduous search for new phones to replace my recently unsupported Lumia 950 units. I’ve been eyeing the FairPhone units since the original FP1, but they’ve still not officially released Stateside, nor have they made a phone which would give me anything close to acceptable service here due to the lack of proper bands.

Fortunately, I found your company and devices in another round of research last night, and I have to say, I’m quite impressed. You’ve hit nearly every issue that is important to me (similar to FairPhone), though obviously not self-repairable.

I have a few questions/concerns that I need addressed, but if the answers sound reasonable, I hope that my family will be your new customers in very short order.

  1. Can the bootloader be re-locked if I experiment with it to return it to a known good/working state?
  2. I see no mention of Qi/PMA/Wireless Charging. To confirm, this unit does not support this?
  3. I see no details on the front/rear camera modules in regards to autofocus and flash.
  4. I see no details on the video recording formats for the front/rear cameras (resolution, framerate, bitrate, audio bitrate/channels)
  5. I see no details on the GPS Constellation support (GPS/Glonass/Beidou/Galileo/etc.)
  6. I do not see any details regarding whether or not there is any compass module, altimeter, or barometric pressure sensor.
  7. I see no mention of Wireless Display (Chromecast/MiraCast) capability. Is this present?
  8. In reading the Warranty page, I see that it specifies only units that were purchased direct from TeraCube’s website. Does that mean that there are no approved vendors/resellers, and that I wouldn’t have any warranty if I were to purchase it from, for instance, here: https://academy.zdnet.com/sales/teracube-smartphone-gsm-unlocked-6gb-ram-128gb-storage-dual-sim-sd-card
  9. For independent reviews, does TeraCube actively seek out reviewers to review and test your hardware? I’ve been a long-time fan and reader of NotebookCheck, and I think they’d be a great outlet for an in-depth test and review of a TeraCube. Their review style is highly detailed, technical, and really gets into many aspects of a device that nearly every other review outlet skips entirely. I think they’d be a good match for a segment of your target audience. Have a look at their FairPhone3 review to get an idea of how they test the devices:
    https://www.notebookcheck.net/Fairphone-3-Smartphone-in-Review-All-Around-Improvement.454635.0.html

Thanks!

#2

Well, I couldn’t wait for any longer for answers, unfortunately:
image

I’d still appreciate any official answers if possible, if not, I’ll dig on my own once they arrive.

#3

Hi @Saijin_Naib - apologies for the late reply. And thank you for ordering Teracube :slight_smile:. Here are some of the answers:

  • Can the bootloader be re-locked if I experiment with it to return it to a known good/working state?

We have not tried it. Should be a quick test. You might beat us to it though.

  • I see no mention of Qi/PMA/Wireless Charging. To confirm, this unit does not support this?

Teracube does not have Qi/wireless charging.

  • I see no details on the front/rear camera modules in regards to autofocus and flash.

The front camera is fixed focus and does not have a flash.

  • I see no details on the video recording formats for the front/rear cameras (resolution, framerate, bitrate, audio bitrate/channels)

Rear camera resolution is 12M. It can take 1080p videos. We do not have the bitrate info as of now.

  • I see no details on the GPS Constellation support (GPS/Glonass/Beidou/Galileo/etc.)

Teracube supports GPS/Beidou/Galileo

  • I do not see any details regarding whether or not there is any compass module, altimeter, or barometric pressure sensor.

Among these, Teracube has E-compass.

  • I see no mention of Wireless Display (Chromecast/MiraCast) capability. Is this present?

Chromecast works out of the box. We have not tested MiraCast.

The warranty is applicable on all Teracube sales. We got notified of this gotcha in the wording recently - will get it fixed soon.

  • For independent reviews, does TeraCube actively seek out reviewers to review and test your hardware? I’ve been a long-time fan and reader of NotebookCheck, and I think they’d be a great outlet for an in-depth test and review of a TeraCube. Their review style is highly detailed, technical, and really gets into many aspects of a device that nearly every other review outlet skips entirely. I think they’d be a good match for a segment of your target audience. Have a look at their FairPhone3 review to get an idea of how they test the devices:
    https://www.notebookcheck.net/Fairphone-3-Smartphone-in-Review-All-Around-Improvement.454635.0.html

We will explore them for a review of Teracube (current version) as well as future models.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

1 Like
#4

No problem. I got a bit nervous, but I believe to have made the right choice by going TeraCube. I really like your team’s open approach and direct presence here on the forum.

I’ll do my best to learn about rooting/un-rooting and will document my findings as they come.

Unfortunate, but I know concessions must be made. I will look into after-market Qi to USB-C “stickers”, which typically work to some level of success.

Reasonable.

Thank you. I will test when I receive my units, same for outputs from the front camera.

Glonass is a sad omission for those of us in Eastern USA, but I’m happy to see it is at least multi-constellation.

Good enough! Barometer would be lovely in possible future platforms.

I will test MiraCast with my Windows 10 devices.

Thank you for clarifying this! Very good to know.

Awesome! I think it’d be fascinating to let them run it through the ringer.

As you get to know me, you’ll learn I always have more questions and suggestions :rofl:

#5

Actually, if you could help me out, somewhere in all the digging I was doing I found a link to a Google Drive with SOOC/un-edited photos and videos from the TeraCube 1. I have NFI where that was. Could you re-post that link, and potentially think about making it more prominent on the forum/site so people who want to inspect the cameras can do so easily?

Thanks!

#6

@Sharad it turns out it was a Google Drive link you shared (somewhere!?) that was full of video/photo from the TeraCube.

I only have a link to a single photo left in my Google Drive “Shared with Me”, so I can’t work my way back to the folder.

image
image1920×947 290 KB

#7

Here you go - https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Sv1t_CtP9-3pkIpZKXLSEhz1GB9xiRFN

1 Like
#8

Thanks so much!

Do you know if the camera modules support RAW/DNG capture, especially with something like OpenCamera?

#9

@Sharad,
Would you and your team ever consider making more of the Google & stock apps removable without root? I plan to gut the TeraCube image of the Google stuff to replace it all with things more aligned with /e/OS and/or other notable FOSS/Privacy-respecting apps.

Unfortunately, at this time, I need to root to accomplish this task, which removes a layer of security and safety that I do not wish to lose.

#10

This is something we would like to do someday - offer a SKU with no Google dependency. However it may not line up with our current plan and resources.

Have you tried unpacking our system image, removing Google’s priv-apps, repack and using it? Let me know if you need unpack/repack instructions.

Other thing is using a GSI. There is a version of phh’s GSI that is without Gapps. You can use that as well. I’ll make the GSI instructions available.

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#11

Yes, I would love a guide here about this process, especially if it does not require us to unlock our bootloaders. Not a huge thing for me, but I don’t want my wife’s phone to be an experiment, you know?

Yes, that would be lovely.

#12

Screenshot_20200514-195713
Screenshot_20200514-1957131080×2280 255 KB

Even with the Camera2 API being used in OpenCamera, the camera modules do not support RAW/DNG or any other Lossless capture, and the image quality is still quite low.

1 Like
#13

Without using root, all stock non-core system apps can be disabled with the exception of Camera, FM Radio, SIM Toolkit, Sound Recorder, and QuickStep.

You can then easily replace them and set default actions/associations without much issue.

Would it be possible to expand that list even further in the upcoming update to include Camera and Sound Recorder at least? I have OpenCamera and Voice Recorder by Simple Mobile Tools that I will replace them with, and I’d rather not have the clutter in the app list, or being asked for defaults.

1 Like
#14

Hi @Sharad

I’m agree to test the unpack / remove gapps / repack method.
Can you write the procedure ?
(I don’t know what to remove / modify inside the zip)

#15

I was playing with these steps almost a year back. And these are really advanced steps - so disclaimer applies. And installing a GSI might be far easier. :slight_smile:. With all that aside, here are my old notes:

Linux:
I used superr kitchen to unpack system.img and then repack it as a ext4 raw image.

  1. Copy (scp) system.img to linux
  2. run superr and create new project (example - “system”)
  3. copy the system.img to the superr project directory (superr_system)
  4. run superr again and “Extract ROM”
  5. Make the desired changes to the extracted system directory inside the project (I removed the “Face unlock” directory under system\priv-app)
  6. Run superr again. goto project.
  7. ROM menu… and then Build Menu
  8. Build EXT4 img > raw img
  9. get file info from system.img (option 4)
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