The 2e's hardware cannot keep up with today's demands

Teracube 2e
#1

I’ve stuck with the 2e for years now. I love the poppable battery and headphone jack, and the long-term support.

However… I don’t think I’ll be able to use this as my main phone for much longer.

When I first bought it, this was the snappiest phone I had ever used… But now, everything is just so unbearably slow. The software made for today’s phones absolutely crushes the 4GB of RAM on this thing.

I can hardly play even the oldest phone games. Sometimes switching between apps can cause the whole phone to crash. Sometimes the phone just straight up restarts itself for no reason at all.

On multiple occasions, my family has tried to blow up my phone to reach me, but I never got any notification of it through my phone or SMS app. They had to get ahold of me through facebook messenger. No record of the missed calls or messages appeared either time.

I can’t keep using this device as my main phone much longer. I will keep it around as a backup device- I never toss my old phones- But I absolutely need to pick up something more recent just to keep up with the tasks in my life that require my phone.

If I’m able to at some point, I want to take some screen recordings of the way this phone snags on even the most basic tasks. I have seen this thing take around 30 seconds to open a single app after restarting. It’d be funny if I wasn’t trying to actually use the phone as a phone!

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#2

It sounds like you might enjoy the experience under Murena /e/OS a bit more than mainline Android, if you have not tried it yet. Since you are about to retire it, it sounds like the perfect time to give it a try.

I run that with TinyBit Launcher and mostly in-box Murena /e/OS apps as my daily.

Guide for emerald:
https://doc.e.foundation/devices/emerald

Guide for zirconia:
https://doc.e.foundation/devices/zirconia

#3

May give it a shot when I’m able to get ahold of a newer device.

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#4

JosFlix7/LowRAM-Flag-Plus: A simple Magisk module that activates “Android Go” with additional props (github.com)

If you’re using Magisk, you might also try applying this module to put the device into low RAM mode. They note what’s disabled, and most of it doesn’t matter. Testing this for about 36 hours has found one game (Another Eden) that fails to launch with this in the same way it fails to launch if you restrict background processes in the Dev settings. Besides that, it’s mostly just that things feel a bit more stable; it doesn’t feel like I have to forcibly terminate background processes with Greenify every two-to-four app closes just to keep the system stable.
One note is that he does stop the boot animation, so you’ll just see the initial splash screen until it gets to your wallpaper. On Android 13, you’ll have the lock at the top of the screen signifying a modified bootloader for two minutes, then it’ll go away while it’s actually booting, but it’ll stay with the same initial Teracube without ever showing the spinning cube.

Personally, I was tempted to try /e/OS but like using tap-to-pay too much to abandon Google’s Android OS, leaving me looking for alternatives. There are a few different Android Go/LowRAM modules available, but most haven’t been updated for the current Magisk module structure. This one still wokred with Magisk 27006.

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#5

Quick note on the LowRAM-Flag-Plus module. For optimal “I want stuff to be limited, please” mode, use the newest (currently v4) version. For optimal “I want everything to work, please” mode, use the last generic (v3.1) version.
The basic difference is that v3.1 doesn’t explicitly set the system limitations, so it works with older devices, and as it doesn’t have those limitations the drawbacks from using the module appear lesser. Swiping in Gboard works properly, and Another Eden also launches without any issues while on v3.1, and the boot animation also lets you know that it’s starting up normally and hasn’t frozen, though there’s more apps that have the irregular ANR force-close (generally both launcher and my fitness band’s sync app) as with the non-module experience.
When using v4, I have less ANR (generally only my launcher, not my fitness band) on startup. As the Gboard keyboard doesn’t swipe when using v4, when using this version I changed to Swiftkey so that my typing style could be less affected. As well, sometimes the launcher itself shows in recent apps as a closable app.

Pros and cons. As long as it seems to run well and doesn’t have any major drawbacks, I’ll probably stick to v3.1 currently myself, but if my experience seems to have any major lags, I’ll keep v4 in mind. It’s easy enough to switch between them with a reboot, anyways.

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#6

Is there a way for me to get the zip file for the latest emerald update? Since I updated, I’m not rooted anymore, and I can’t seem to find an accessible file to re-install magisk with.

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