When I got this phone on my hands, I immediately knew that I’ll love it for one reason – the word “NXTPAPER” on the box. I know this technology isn’t meant for everyone – so if that’s not your cup of tea – you can respectfully move on to the next video, but I recommend you to stay a while as we’re going to talk about the display of this phone.
Screen
The main highlight of this phone to me, is the display. NXTPAPER displays are proprietary tech from TCL, and as the name suggests – it kinda looks paper-like. So, this phone uses a 6.8-inch screen with a resolution of 2460×1080 pixels and goes up to 120Hz refresh rate. Pretty standard, but the glass on top of the display is a 2.5D glass with their proprietary NXTPAPER matte finish and also anti-glare coating
This means, the entire screen, even with just around 770 nits maximum – it’s actually okay since the screen is matte and has an anti-glare coating on top. It doesn’t need to work as hard to fight against the bright sunlight even if we’re using this phone outside on a bright sunny day.
The color accuracy is also very good. And yet, this screen’s color accuracy doesn’t actually matter because the main purpose is that it can do this.
Yes, with just a flick of this button at the side, it auwill ask us if we want to go Ink Paper Mode or Max Ink Mode. Practically, the Ink Paper Mode does what it says – emulating a paper-like display effect with black and white ink only, whereby Max Ink Mode takes it a step further and activates power-saving features too.
I just wish that TCL can make the transition between the modes faster because it does take like a good 5 or 10 seconds to change between the modes now.
And why would you want to use it in the Ink Paper Mode? For reading, of course. To those who uses their phones or tablets to read ebooks, this display is a dream come true. Seriously, reading books on this screen is so comfortable. I really hope that there are more phone brands out there to include this kind of display – particularly on tablets.
Do keep in mind that this NXTPAPER screen is not a screen protector and it does not have a screen protector. In fact, I think screen protectors don’t work either.
Design
The design of this phone is fairly simple. It is available in 5 different colors, Moon Gray, Midnight Blue, Pale Gold, Rosy Purple – and the Alps White which is what we have here. It kinda looks like marble and the camera bump is big for no reason.
Cameras
The camera specs are as shown on the screen here. Yeah, the camera bump is just unnecessarily huge for this camera hardware.
To have a look at all the pictures taken with the TCL 50 Pro NXTPAPER 5G, watch our video at the top of this review.
Performance
As for the performance, I think this is the one big drawback of this phone. I mean, with such a beautiful screen, I want to use it as my secondary phone too – but it just not that snappy. That Dimensity 6300 chipset is considered to be an entry-level phone and as expected, it snags a bit here and there.
If you want to play some games like Genshin Impact on this, then that’s quite impossible to get it running even at the lowest settings.
Battery life
As for the battery life, this phone comes with a 5,010mAh battery and it can last for about 13 hours in our standardized battery life test. It can last you throughout a full day’s usage, granted if there’s no gaming.
Charging speed
As for the charging speed, this phone comes with a 33W charger in the box. And it seems to be USB-PD compatible as well? I can’t confirm it as the labels are kinda confusing.
Anyway, the charging speed is rather okay as it takes around 93 minutes to charge from 15% to completion, though the temperature when it is trying to boost the wattage is very worrying. Seriously, it hovers around 44°C for a long time and the charging speed only starts to ramp down when the battery hits 75% charged.
When we swap over to our USB-PD PPS charger, it takes around 100 minutes to charge completely – still within the margin of error, and it also has the same charging trend as the stock charger. Nonetheless, it just means that we can use the included charger or any USB-PD PPS charger and it’ll yield the same charging speed.
Software
As for the software, I have to say that this one is actually very simple. It’s using TCL’s own TCL UI version 7.0 on top of Android 14 but this phone really does feel like it’s AOSP with some extra NXTPAPER features and apps sprinkled on top.
It’s a good thing here as this phone’s Dimensity 6300 chipset will appreciate the lightweightedness of the UI. It’s just that the Jnotes app is actually a paid subscription, not a free app. This is important because…
Free accessory
For our particular unit, it comes bundled with this case. It’s a flip cover case that has a stylus hidden at the bend point. This stylus… I can’t really test it because bro really asked us to pay for a note-taking app.
A few more things to mention
And a few more things to mention – this phone comes with a USB 2.0 port at the bottom and it’s also one of those rare phones with an audio jack. It even comes with a wired earphone in the box too!
It only has a single SIM card slot but it does have a microSD card slot as well.
Conclusion
And that’s actually it for the TCL 50 Pro NXTPAPER 5G. This phone’s main highlight is the magnificent screen, and they delivered on that segment magnificently. I do wish that this phone had a better chipset with better cameras – then it would really stand out in the sea of smartphones.
At the price of RM1,199, it depends on your priority. Do you like to read stuff on your phone? If you do, then this is a great choice.
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