- Say what you will about Apple and Google
and everybody else who makes disposable phones.
When you buy a higher end phone,
usually what you're buying is longevity.
I ran my iPhone 6s Plus into the ground.
Honestly,
I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do that
with my 11 Pro Max,
because there's so many more points of failure
despite the fact that the thing is not repairable.
Which is where this comes in.
This is the Teracube.
It's,
well, it's something completely different.
This is something we've been trying
to kind of find a spot for a while now.
Let's just say it's been buried by more glamorous products.
It's just,
it's not that interesting from a technical standpoint.
But I'll tell you what it is,
it is, at least purportedly, sustainable.
Let's take a look at their website real quick.
I have to look at something,
there's nothing on this box
that tells me what it is, aside from a phone.
In fact, I don't even think it says that it's a phone.
Thank you for making a difference.
Nope, Nope, Nope.
That's it.
It's a Teracube.
You gotta know what that is.
Here we go.
It's the next evolution of sustainable smartphones.
Most smartphones lasts an average of two years or less,
I beg to differ, but at the same time,
I know people keep them for less than two years.
They offer a four year warranty with this thing,
as well as four years of support.
Teracube phones are engineered and serviced
to last up to four years and beyond.
Serviced?
So let's see, game-changing four year warranty,
which is well, yeah, a lot,
because most phones come with like a one-year warranty
in North America.
Here's the list of the things
that the warranty doesn't cover.
Defects or damage resulting from accidents,
neglect, misuse or abnormal use.
So, this is the AppleCare.
This is where that AppleCare thing would come in,
the flat fee repairs.
Scratches, dents and cosmetic damage,
unless caused by Teracube.
So if you sent it back for repair
and it came back scratched,
they would obviously cover that.
Defects or damage resulting from excessive force.
Ordinary wear and tear,
devices that have the serial number removed,
defaced or damaged.
Okay.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Yeah, okay.
So it's pretty standard stuff.
So it's made with 25% recycled polycarbonate,
not quite on the level of the Fairphone,
but it's still a good thing to have.
Oh, it's got a headphone jack, great.
That's actually great.
Like, I sound like I'm not super enthused,
but like, I've got wired headphones,
that I can't use with my new phone without a dongle,
and that dongle is eventually gonna go
into the landfill as well right, so.
- [Guy] I didn't even get a dongle with my iPhone 13 Pro.
- Yeah, they stopped doing it.
With stock Android with three years of updates, okay.
Cameras, I mean, megapixels don't really matter,
so I can't really tell much from this.
It's got pin, fingerprint, okay.
Face unlock, WiFi, they don't say what WiFi it is.
4G, not 5G, and it's got a USB-C port.
And a separate micro SD card slot, okay.
- [Johna] You forgot the best thing.
- What is the best thing?
- [Johna] FM radio.
- Anyway, so why haven't we looked at this earlier, Johno?
Yeah, there's a reason why we're looking at it now.
We missed the review cycle on this thing
by about six months, I think, could be nine months.
It might be a baby.
Let's get into the box, shall we?
Oh, it's very unassuming.
like the box is entirely,
it's like, it's entirely cardboard.
Again, that's less stuff that's going into the landfill.
So like, it comes with a case.
Is that dust or is it,
like, it looks like it's the same color as this,
so it looks like it's just dust on it, but it's not.
It's kind of interesting.
It looks like it's like pre-scoped.
It's like fatigued or stressed jeans.
- [Johna] Yo, it's actually a biodegradable case.
- Interesting.
There's a little pack of snack,
which you shouldn't eat, but you know,
it's what every kid dreams of eating.
(calm guitar music)
And that's about it.
You've got your documentation here, I guess.
And whatever this is.
Better for your pocket, better for the planet.
Where is the charger?
What you have in your hand is the world's most minimalistic
and eco-friendly smartphone packaging.
Made with 50% less materials, recycled paper, soy inks,
while eliminating redundant accessories, like the charger.
You know, the less weight you have to transport,
the less volume you have to transport,
the less fuel is actually burned per unit
that you're transporting.
If you need one, you can get one
at their website or literally anywhere.
And then we have this.
Dear customer,
thank you for your support in bringing Teracube 2e to life.
Teracube 2e is crafted from 25% recycled plastics.
I dropped the card
and the included case is fully biodegradable.
If you enjoy Teracube, give us a,
on your favorite social media
and share with your friends and family.
They're actually telling you how to open the back.
Oh, and it's got a screen protector on it too.
Oh it.
Wait what?
The back came off with the case.
Like the back is literally in here.
(mockingly grunts)
Okay, yeah. it doesn't come off super easily,
but easily enough.
And there's that battery.
It's big and green.
And there's the SD card slot right there.
Fingerprint sensors there.
I don't really see a whole lot else.
Where's the SIM cards slot?
Am I just blind?
Oh no, there they are.
There's two same card slots right there
that I was looking at,
but refused to recognize in any way, shape or form.
So let's just take the peel off.
Ooh, there I am.
All right,
let's get this thing back together and get it booted up.
But first let's talk to you about the reason
why we decided to take a look at this,
this far after its release.
And that is for Team Seas.
Team Seas is a new initiative,
kind of like the Team Trees one from Mr. Beast
and Mark Rober and Austin
and everybody else who had gotten involved
and it was successful to put it mildly.
And in this case, Team Seas is looking to do the same thing,
but for pounds of garbage floating around in the ocean.
I don't know if you know this about me,
but I basically lived near the water for my entire life.
Like I've lived basically on a coast.
Like I live here, which is right next to the Pacific ocean.
And I lived in Newfoundland,
pretty much near the harbors
and yeah,
it would be nice to be able to have that
for future generations.
And also, to still have that for me to go back to.
It'll be there.
It'll just be like piled up with trash, yeah.
And this is designed to really deal
with that kind of problem.
I don't know if this is an official Team Seas thing or not.
This is kind of where the sponsor spot normally goes,
but we're going to go ahead and say,
go and donate some money to Team Seas.
It's a very worthy cause.
Like there is a massive amount of garbage in the ocean
and it is a massive problem.
Like have you noticed that
there's a giant garbage patch
floating around in the Pacific ocean?
And it's just kind of like swirling out there,
like a giant toilet and there's nowhere for it to go.
It's just generally a good thing to clean that up
because it's going to affect Marine life,
it's going to affect our food chain.
Like there are many people who depend on the ocean
for their food and yeah, it's just a really good cause.
And I think that you should probably look into it.
Johno tells me there's going to be a link below
that you can click and find out all about it.
So I guess maybe it is technically a thing that we're doing.
Not sponsored.
All right, let's shelve this battery and put the back on,
see if it powers up.
- [Johna] It feels so weird to see a phone
with a removable back.
- Yeah and I mean, Fairphone was like that too,
but it was like kind of chunky in the back,
like you had to really rip at the back to get it off.
This is like, kind of like the old school phones,
where it's like, yeah, back just comes off.
Teracube.
It's pretty bright. It is an IPS display.
And also, I mean, yeah, I can see pixels.
So if I were holding it up like this
and kind of like looking at it,
yeah, it doesn't look that bad.
Come to think of it,
I had like this kind of pixel density with my Galaxy Nexus.
What a fitting wallpaper for this!
It's not snappy.
Then again, it just did just boot up.
So, let's give it a sec.
Yeah, it's downloading stuff from Google Play.
Let's just give it a minute.
Help make Chrome better. No.
Google, I don't care about you anymore.
I use DuckDuckGo now.
(Johna laughing)
I will say the vibration motor,
it feels like a cheap phone, a vibration motor.
It's not like punchy.
It just like, (hysterical humming)
it's not super smooth.
I'll tell you that much.
Well, it's 1.8 gigahertz, right? Or 1.9?
Also that screen protector, it feels kind of tacky.
Like doing this, like I can feel it like sticking.
I don't know,
I don't know if this is gorilla glass
or any kind of fun glass underneath.
Oh, there is an update available.
This update was released in May,
which should tell you something about how long
we've been holding onto this.
You know what, I'm going to log into the play store,
so I can download like Minecraft or something.
And now I need verification.
Oh, it's somebody, clearly, walked me in.
Okay.
- [Johna] Has someone just said "Yes" to you?
- Yeah. (loud laughter)
Do we not own Minecraft on this account? What the hell?
Why is it?
Wait, what?
Why does it want me to buy it? It's in my library.
I'm not going to buy Minecraft again.
I'll just install Genshin Impact.
- [Johna] Give me those waifus.
(hysterical laughter)
It's got environments.
I've never played that game.
Surprisingly, this was only 200 megs.
So, I'm guessing it's gonna need to download more data.
- [Brandon] Are you actually downloading Genshin Impact?
(hysterical laughing)
- What?
That frame rate does not look good.
- [Johna] That's all you wanted to see, right?
Wait, is that it?
- That's all I'm going to get unless I log in.
Let's watch the way to short circuit
or we could watch, you know,
Crab Rave.
- [Johna] We could also test out the speaker.
- That was the idea. (hysterical laughter)
Oh, look, Crab Rave, right there.
First history hit.
YouTube app crashed. That was cool.
Starting to regret not getting that update.
(mobile music playing) I don't care.
- [Brandon] Was that an ad for TikTok?
- Yes, it was.
(crunching sound)
It sounds pretty crunchy.
What? - It crashed again.
- I'm going to install the update.
Fine. There it goes.
It's one and a half gigs.
It's going to take a couple of minutes.
It'll probably take a little longer to install to.
Oh, I want to like this thing.
but it's giving me very little reasons to.
What?
Okay, cool.
Okay, I was going to say that the updater just crashed.
(hysterical laughter)
(somber music)
Rule 34. (loud laugh)
Oh, cool. It just finished.
Hey, let's try that again.
Crab Champions Gameplay.
The contrast ratio looks pretty good.
Even knowing that it's 720p.
Thankfully at 720p, that's like RGB IPS.
So that means that we're not limited to like 10 tile
resolutions, like my Galaxy Nexus was.
Okay, it's pretty good at the old treble.
(Crab Rave plays on mobile)
(waves crashing sound)
This is my iPhone. (music plays violently)
Oh God! It's playing.
(hysterical laughter)
I forgot I hit it on 2x playback speed.
(Carb Rave continues playing)
Yeah, yeah, it's not even close.
I mean, to be clear,
this isn't the best I've ever heard a smartphone sound,
but this is less than that.
Then again, I mean, how much is this thing?
I don't, I don't actually know.
It's $200.
All right.
That makes it a lot more understandable.
Oh yeah! Angry birds.
I was downloading angry birds.
Let's see if that works.
(mobile sounds playing)
It was smooth until the explosion.
Okay, now it's smooth.
So, I just needed to load that asset, I guess.
Let's just quickly see how the Waifu Simulator works.
I mean, it's not so much a Waifu Simulator,
as it is Waifu collection, like, collect-a-thon.
It's like, I gotta catch them all kind of thing.
Got a Waifu I'm on.
Like, I'm not sure if this is,
no, this is definitely not pre-rendered.
If it is, then, that having in inconsistent frame rate,
is even worse.
Let's try the camera.
Actually that doesn't look too terrible.
(mobile phone chimes)
Lowell.
It's a selfie camera playing.
I guess, let's try a video and we can get a bit of the,
the microphone as well.
So, I don't think it's got any stabilization, whatsoever.
But I'm gotta kind of try and stabilize it
with the swivel of the chair here.
It's like, if I try to tan it myself,
it's just going to be like,
well, maybe it's got like digital stabilization,
but I don't think it has optical stabilization.
Okay, that microphone, super quiet for one.
Two, it doesn't sound so great.
It sounds kind of scratchy.
Then again, so are the speakers.
At $200, it's hard to fault it that much.
All the little issues that I have with this phone,
they're like, oh, well,
this is what I would expect from like a five or $600 phone.
I would expect these things to work
and I'd expect them to work well.
With that being said, the idea,
that this phone will last for four years,
it becomes a little dubious.
Like it's not necessarily that the phone itself
won't last that long,
it's that you won't last that long with the phone,
because you're not going to stick with it.
So, yeah. (hysterical laughter)
I mean,
I don't want to call it e-waste
cause like obviously it does have a reason to exist
and I'm not the person that this phone is marketed towards.
However, I'm not sure who,
like, this is the kind of experience that,
I kind of got out of the Linux phones.
Like you can do stuff, but it's not there yet, you know.
I think maybe if they gave it another couple of generations,
they could get there, at this price point.
As it is right now though, why?
I think the processors are lot of the problem.
Like everything is ticking the boxes
for something that like for a budget phone
and an environmentally conscious phone
that you've got to keep for awhile.
This chip set, this SOC,
is just not strong enough to last that four years,
I would argue that it was obsolete,
like, at the time it was released.
That's the Terra cube.
Unfortunately, I really wish them the best.
This is a good idea.
Like four year warranty, four year software support.
Like that's great.
I want to see more of that
and I don't want to put that down.
It's just, it's let down for the hardware.
- [Johna] Donate, Please.
Yes, donate to Team Seas,
so we can get these out of the ocean.
(hysterical laughter)
Anyway, this was a disappointment, unfortunately.
But not all short circuits are.
So make sure you get subscribed and follow.
So, you don't miss any unboxings,
like this one and not like this one.