Could you live with this budget Android for four years?

Teracube would then attempt to repair your old one and either resell or ship it to another customer who might've broken their phone.Mittal, along with Anthony Tsim -- a general manager at Kinivo -- went in on the idea and armed with their extensive electronics and business knowhow, launched the Teracube Kickstarter last year. It's also not as modular or user-serviceable as the now-defunct Project Ara or the FairPhone 3, which at least lets you swap out the battery and has easily replaceable parts.But Mittal said that if it really wanted to make the Teracube totally environmentally-friendly and be as modular and serviceable as the FairPhone 3 or Project Ara, it would take a lot of time and money, which it just simply doesn't have right now as a small startup. "Repairing or upgrading an old phone, instead of replacing it, is good for your wallet, too."The process of getting the Teracube project up and running was a challenge. "They told us over and over that people want new phones every year, and that this was a bad idea," said Mittal. But Mittal and Tsim cited recent studies such as the ones from Hyla Mobile or Kantar Worldpanel that consumers are actually keeping their phones for longer these days, either due to the rising price of handsets or the fact that there's not a lot of reason to upgrade.The real reason people get new phones, Mittal says, is because something bad happens, like the screen breaks, the software gets a little sluggish, or the battery life deteriorates. Android is open source [...] we'll be able to tune every update so that the phone keeps running smoothly."As for why Teracube settled on a warranty of four years (why not three or five?) or why they decided to have a buffer pool of a couple hundred phones (why not more or less?), well, there's no real reason.