Not too long ago we have just reviewed the Tab 11 LTE which you can read it HERE. Now back to this, the TCL 40 NXTPAPER 5G is a take on a smartphone that feels like a paper, scroll like one, and feels like one, so lets just quickly check it out on what it has to offer on it’s first take on such innovation.
Unboxing Content
- The phone itself
- Translucent Case
- USB A to C Cable
- Power Adaptor
- Sim Ejector
- 3.5mm Earphone
- User Manual/QSG/Warranty Statement
Design
TCL basically looks back to the very beginning on how human interact with knowledge in a basic way, there is a reason why I said that, looking at the back of the phone shows the uniqueness, which is the sandy rough texture that is representing the way how a person touches the surface very much connected to our soil, the feeling of touching the rough earth surfaces where one in the past would scribble on the sand and thus the symbols can be drawn, but obviously please dont draw anything towards the back of the phone, it is just my expression on how I felt it. The rough black surface also covers to the frame of the phone, making it symmetrical and balanced at almost all angles. Now there is an advantage to it, cleaning the phone up is also easy, just use a wet cloth and clean the surface, and a dry tissue paper or cloth to wipe it one more time, the phone is just as good as new, as if you have just bought it only.
The rest remains as basic, a headphone jack, single speaker setup, and a USB C cable for data and charging.
Display & Audio
The TCL 40 NXTPAPER 5G display is the talk of the town, featuring a 6.6 inch 720P+ display with dynamic 90Hz refresh rate, with on top of the display is laminated with a matte anti-glare glass display on top, making it smooth on the scrolling and interacting with it. All round the touch is smooth and backed by the 90Hz display, it does felt fluid at all times. In general, the display can peaked up the brightness up to 500 nits.
Another excellent feature that the phone has its the electronic paper display function, there is two modes you can choose from, Colour Paper mode which switch the display to a paper like mode, while retaining the colors which is great for reading manga or webpages. Another mode is the Ink Paper which is more optimizer towards reading heavy text or text based pages in monochrome mode. All of which can be quickly switched via the NXTPAPER mode on the fly without terminating the app, except for games.
Now towards the audio, there is no specific or special audio settings, but experience wise, it is definitely not the loudest we ever experience, but it is audible around tested within a small size room, to be it is more than enough for a device that focuses on the display, surely you can expand your enjoyment with your wired or wireless Bluetooth headset/TWS.
Camera
The TCL 40 NXTPAPER 5G camera is equipped with one 50MP lens, 2MP macro and another 2MP depth lens, while the selfie cam is a 8MP wide angle camera. It does support PDAF on the main rear lens, but OIS and EIS is not present, which is pretty much expected.
Now please, the phone main selling point is not the camera, however it does come out decent on our day and night capture test which surprises us cause it does looks nice, while zooming it loses details over further far object, which by all means, kind of expected but the overall range and representations are still properly identifiable. Text and near objects can be read over the images and therefore we can easily say that for day to day and uploads over to social media, yes it is a pass as long you know what you are expecting. Oh yeah, video recording is limited to 1080P at 30FPS including both front and back camera module, no surprises on this.
Performance, Experience and Benchmarks
The phone is powered by a mid range MediaTek Dimensity 6020 (which is a rebatched D700 SOC) with 6GB of DDR4 memory and 256GB of EMMC storage with options to expand up to 1TB via a MicroSD card for further expansion.
One aspect that we are impressed is the inclusion of the 5000Mah battery in the phone can last you up to 3 days, if you are switching the mode to NXTPAPER Ink Paper Display. This is one good way of keeping the phone last longer without requiring frequent charging while you still can work on your messages, occasional social media browsing and reading your favorite novel, documents, etc.
The phone is powered by TCL UI 5 with Android 13 and supports RAM expansion up to 6GB fixed. Despite that day to day use remains fluid and you will still be able to game with it, so long you are setting games like Genshin Impact to low graphics and it is still enjoyable towards short domain hunting. Our benchmarks result also shows that most of the test came out within expectation and optimized for most apps and games.
Verdict & Conclusion
TCL 40 NXTPAPER 5G can be summarized as a phone that is crafted and inspired by the design that is surrounding us, combining the nature of the environment and a phone that care for of our visuals delicately as TCL definitely took a slightly different angle towards their steps of bringing in such phone with electronic paper display embedded to it, and we are looking forward towards what’s coming in for TCL in the future.
The TCL 40 NXTPAPER 5G is now available for RM999. For more information CLICK here to find out more.
Special thanks to TCL for providing us the final unit for evaluation, we look forward for what’s coming in the future.