The terms ‘environmentally conscious’ and ‘consumer electronics’ rarely go hand in hand, but smartphones like the Teracube are trying to bridge that gap.
There are quite a few things that make the Teracube an impressive phone. It’s perhaps the only modern, sleek smartphone to have a $249 price tag, a headphone jack, dual-SIM capabilities, and a whopping 4-year warranty. Teracube was designed not as a flagship item of desire, but a consciously made phone that delivers on features and is absolutely built to last. Even beyond 4 years, the phone is designed to be completely repairable unlike smartphones of today, ensuring a cradle-to-cradle approach that doesn’t result in the generation of mass e-waste. The Teracube, with its contemporary, notched design looks a lot like a flagship… but is, in fact, a great phone that defies what most flagships do by abandoning planned obsolescence and championing sustainability.
The model behind the Teracube is a pretty novel one. Warranties cover defects, but if you happen to drop your iPhone 11 on the floor and shatter the screen or even the rear panel, or into the toilet, you’re faced with the prospect of paying up to $500 to repair your phone. With the Teracube, things are much simpler. You can get the phone fixed for any sort of damage for a flat fee of $39. Send your broken phone in and pay the repair fee and Teracube sends you a close-to-new phone in exchange. Meanwhile, the company fixes and refurbishes YOUR broken phone and gives it to someone else who shattered their phone or dropped it in the swimming pool. This model revolves around the Teracube’s ability to easily be repaired and aims at constantly recycling phones rather than turning them into e-waste.
That being said, with its $300 price tag, the Teracube is a pretty great phone for its price. It comes with a 6.2-inch Full HD display and a great screen-to-body ratio resulting in pretty thin bezels. In an effort to make it easy to un-assemble and fix the phones, the Teracube is marginally thicker than most smartphones, but that slight thickness also allows it to have a 3.5mm jack, allowing you to use good-old wired headphones with your mobile. The phone comes with 6 GB RAM and 128 GB Storage, along with Dual SIM and Micro SD Support. It features dual-rear cameras, and has a fingerprint sensor on the back, and ships with Android 9. Not too bad, considering how it’s easy on your wallet and on the environment.
Designer: Teracube
