What’s the best electronic Cube?
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This article is a comparison of the currently available 3x3 Rubic cubes, that are able to submit their current state to a mobile app.
Hey I am André. I am a Software Engineer focussing on mobile platforms. One year ago I started cubing, because I was interested on how that puzzle can be solved. While in the end the solution was pretty simple, I’ve noticed that there’s a HUGE community and even big events about it.
Because it felt weird that in the year 2018 people starting and stoping their cube counter still manually, I have been searching for an electronic version of the cube. I found the Giiker i3 and ordered it immediately. The app called “Supercube” is… not ideal from an Android Developers View. I wanted to develop my own “Cube Application”, that just starts and stops the time without a heavy Game Engine that sucks my battery empty.
I figured, that there are more cubes coming, so I thought about an abstraction for those and future cubes that are not existing yet. This is why I bought all of them and I could directly compare them.
Look and Feel
The GAN 356i is by far the best in that category. It looks and feels exactly like the other Cubes from GAN, very professional, also there’s no weight difference feel-able.
The GoCube feels a bit cheap because of its material. Additionally it has rounded Edges which look weird, but aren’t disturbing. All in all a good handling.
The Giiker (both the i3 and the i3S) in the beginning feels really good, but for some reason the smoothness of the movements decreases by time. It might be that I need to lube it again or better. Other than that, the Giiker by far the loudest.
An additional feature of the GoCube is the light, which is totally useless but looks nice. You cannot use any of the cubes in the dark. Even the lights on the GoCube cannot tell you the difference between red and orange.
Enabling the cube
With enabling I mean “enable” it’s technology in order to connect it to a mobile application. All cubes are…
