Thank you Teracube, comments, sustainability and end of life

Teracube One
#1
  1. Thank you.

Hi Sharad, and Teracube community. I have passed the four-year mark with my Teracube 1, and it seems that Teracube will not provide more OS updates past my current Android 10.02 (Please correct if wrong!). I am happy to have been able to support this company as an early adopter.

THANK YOU TO ALL OF YOU AT TERACUBE for entering this market with a concrete sustainability claim.

You have largely fulfilled my expectations. I am not easy on my phones, and support was good generally, and I had a hassle-free experience when it came to replacements.

Thank you also to this amazing community, for the valuable information, and for reminding me that I am not the only one that cares.

  1. Comments

Invest in a more protective phone case option. I would have bought a bulkier one were it available, and its use would have saved you on warranty costs.

I had a good overall experience, but did have persistent basic functionality problems: answering phone calls (!!!), GPS, camera. Without minimizing those, the phone otherwise worked well for me. Only now is it beginning to be slow, reminding me of my used iphone days.

You sell some spare parts but I hope you continue to improve on repairability. That could also save you on warranty costs. Where are the ifixit pages for those parts (nudge to the community, too)? More repairable alternative options, even in the US, are improving.

In fulfilling your warranty to customers like myself you have reduced the environmental and carbon impact of your customers. Quantify it! Submit reports to CDP or others/ at least fill out an EPA or UN greenhouse gas report spreadsheet. For your class of phone, whatever the total estimate, I kept the phone for X percent longer than I would have with a different company. Let us know how you engage your supply chain. Post your formal end of life plan for customer’s phones - the info in 3 below.

  1. OS/ end of life.

Afterlife. My still in use phone is not zippy, but after I switch it should still be able to browse the web, etc, as an extra device with wifi. My concern is with security, then functionality. Is there an open-source OS, or another available option out there that you could link to/ suggest we install for this purpose? This affects the full lifecycle impact of a given device. What are other Teracube 1 users doing with their old phones?

Grave. Does Teracube suggest a particular recycling option? Would paying for phones to be returned be a net loss? (There is unmet demand for batteries for recycling.)

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#2

Thanks for the thoughtful retrospective on your experience!

Please see this note from one of our developers:

In short, there is work (and has been work) done internally to try and bring the One up to date with Android 12/13 and Certified. It isn’t polished for beta testing or release yet, but we are pursuing it.

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#3

Thank you so much Saijin for your reply. I will look out for updates. Long running support is the sustainability measure your company carries out. You have supported my phone for four years, but since time of support is your central idea I hope you create one soon, thereby extending that time period. (You do not release info or make claims about supply chain or other sustainability or ESG measures). If you are in the black and have personnel that could work on it I’d be happy to point you to resources that would allow you to start with preliminary climate benchmarking.

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#4

I do not have visibility into those aspects of operation, but @Sharad does.

Thanks for raising them!

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#5

But how soon is soon? We should get updates of realistic timeframes we can expect to see Android 12/13 and if there’s anything of it that’s completed yet.

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