By Canadian Reviewer Staff
TCL may not be the first company to come to mind when it comes to flagship smartphones. This is the world’s number two television maker after all and has built a name for itself in making premium screen technology widely available.
What most people don’t know is that TCL has been in the smartphone game for some time. It was a licensee of brands like Alcatel, Palm, and BlackBerry. TCL was behind the resurgent KeyOne and Key2 models, the very last smartphones that featured QWERTY keyboards.
The TCL 10 Pro comes as a complete surprise in a year where many of us are in dire need of good news. For the price of a base iPhone SE 2, the TCL 10 Pro offers an impressive and crisp 6.47” FHD curved AMOLED display the likes that we’ve only seen on flagship Samsung phones. This TCL 10 Pro has a four camera array with up to 64MP ultra-high resolution photo capability, plus standalone macro, super-wide angle, and low-light cameras as well as a 24 megapixel front facing camera. It also features an in-display fingerprint sensor and face unlock, something that some other flagship smartphones don’t even have yet.
Consider a fast-charging 4500 man battery with OTG reverse charging and a decent Qualcomm Snapdragon 675 Octa-core processor with 6GB of RAM and 128 GB of onboard storage, and it looks like TCL has hit the sweet spot in terms of features given its $700 CAD (Bell) and 665 CAD (Telus) pricing.
Great Artists Steal
There’s no denying the deep, um, inspiration from Samsung’s Galaxy S10 line of smartphones serving as the template for the TCL 10 Pro. Sleek glass on glass construction, iridescent Gorilla Glass backplate, sensational borderless curved display with a little dimple for the front-facing camera. It’s all here. Why, TCL has even added their own take of the Edge Panel with “Edge Bar” which gives you quick access to the apps you use most.
In terms of software, TCL actually improves on what Samsung offers by offering less. Sure, they have a few of their own apps but nowhere as intrusive as Samsung who has an entire folder for all their apps plus another one with pre-installed Microsoft apps. Samsung even has its own app store, which TCL doesn’t, yet. The result is a pure enough implementation of Android 10 that’s surprisingly snappy and responsive.
We’re coming from a OnePlus 7T, which similarly has flagship specs and a pared down user interface. The TCL 10 Pro was demonstrably snappier and more responsive than our daily driver OnePlus 7T during opening apps as well as loading complex webpages on Chrome. Given that the TCL 10 had more to offer in terms of camera technology, it was a no brainer to switch permanently from the OnePlus 7T to our review TCL 10 Pro.
Going Against The Grain
Smartphone makers have become a bit user-hostile of late. They’ve increased prices while constantly taking out features and conveniences users have grown to love. Rumou rs are that the next batch of flagships from Apple and Samsung won’t even come with chargers or earbud headphones. They’ve already taken the headphone jack away, a move that the entire industry seems to have followed. Well, except for TCL.
I was delighted to find a perfectly working headphone jack in the TCL 10 Pro. Not only that, this smartphone also features an IR port and an app that can be used to program your TV, set top box, smart home appliances, electric fans, water heaters and many others. I set it up to work with my Vizio TV and my cable box and I can now control them from the phone. The TCL 10 Pro also features an FM radio, which is nice to have.
TCL is going against the grain by offering a wide selection of features and options in its first North American flagship. The tradeoff is that the TCL 10 Pro is not water resistant, nor does it have wireless charging, but these are features not everybody needs.
Quad Camera Set-up Slips up
We like the way TCL implemented its camera array in a neat single file line in the back flanked by two flash units. There are no protrusions or unsightly camera bumps to give the rear backplate a weird, unbalanced feel. The only dimples you feel are the very slightly raised LED flash units. Right from the get-go, TCL has solved one of the biggest issues we’ve had with smartphones of late, lazy design and integration of the rear cameras, here’s the upstart showing the incumbents how its done.
TCL’s camera aspirations are ambitious to say the least. A lot is promised and 64MP (high-res) + 16MP (super wide) + 5MP (macro) + 2MP (super low light) sounds astounding on paper, but how good are the cameras? For standard snapshots and carefully composed macro shots the cameras work well. Super wide can work well in certain situations but is just okay. While there is 1X, 2X and 10X digital zoom, but anything above 2X is over processed to the point of being cartoonish (oddly enough, an issue we observed with the BlackBerry KEY2).
Similarly, the 24 MP front facing camera applies a smoothening cosmetic filter when taking selfies which is grossly artificial. Having such a high resolution camera should mean that it can capture sharp images without much processing juju, but alas, this selfie cam is poorly tuned.
Out of the box, the TCL 10 Pro’s cameras are disappointing, the idea that all of these cameras could cover such a wide range of photo styles just makes it worse when you realize that photos coming out of this smartphone will likely be substandard. Can a software firmware update make these cameras better, tough to say at this point but In wouldn’t get my hopes up.
+10 Display Excellence
While the TCL 10 Pro’s ambitious camera array underwhelms, its 6.47-inch FHD+ curved AMOLED display delights. This is one of the most impressive displays we’ve seen and that it can stand toe-to-toe with the best from Samsung and Apple (also sourced from Samsung) is a testament to TCL’s display expertise. The 10 Pro just has such a great display that you want to interact with it more. Playing games like Asphalt 9, watching streaming video, doom scrolling Twitter and getting sucked into the rabbit hole that is Instagram is a lot more delightful with TCL 10 Pro’s display. What an achievement for a first flagship!
-10 Rough Edges
TCL did get a lot of things right with the 10 Pro and it certainly is worth a look if you’ve pined for the sleek Samsung flagship but found them to be priced out of reach. Being a first flagship device puts a lot of pressure on the TCL 10 Pro, and it passes some aspects with flying colours (price, performance, battery life, display quality are all slam dunks). That said, there are some considerable issues with this device.
The on screen fingerprint sensor is slow and has a hard time reading recorded fingerprints. We experienced an issue where watching streaming cable TV and Netflix resulted in audio but no picture showing up. Multiple restarts seemed to fix the issue. The speaker loudness is quite weak and it feels like a flagship smartphone should offer stereo sound but we only got audio from the bottom firing speaker.
There are workarounds for many or these issues, which means users can still get a lot of use out of the TCL 10 Pro. The lackluster camera performance might be a huge blocker for those hoping to make the most out of the promise of a quad camera feature. The photo quality difference between the TCL 10 Pro and even a two year old Samsung, iPhone, or Huawei handset will be quite pronounced.
TCL is on the right track, this first flagship will turn heads and for a number of users it will be a completely respectable smartphone to consider. There's a short list of things that need improvement before the TCL 10 pro can be included in the same conversation as the rivals it is aspiring to overthrow but its general high quality build and strong pricing offsets these.
Rating: 4 out of 5