The TCL 30 XE 5G is the company’s first phone for T-Mobile and Metro, however, it will later be made available to other carriers as well. US carriers that is, since it and the V are US-exclusives. TCL has 30-series phones ready to launch in Europe, but they will be unveiled at the MWC.
Anyway, this model is marginally smaller
with a 6.52” display, which supports 90 Hz refresh rate (the V display only
does 60 Hz), along with 180 Hz touch sampling rate. The bad news is that it
only has 720p+ resolution (20:9). Also, it switches to DragonTrail 3 for its
protective glass and a V-notch for its 8 MP selfie camera. It does keep the fingerprint
reader on the back, though.
Also here is a basic 13 MP main camera,
which at least matches the 1080p@30 fps video capabilities of the higher
resolution camera on the V model. There’s no ultra wide lens here, just a 2 MP
macro and 2 MP depth modules. The other change is the chipset – a Dimensity 700
(7 nm), which is actually slightly faster than the Snapdragon chip. It gets the
same 4 GB of RAM, but half the storage, 64 GB (of which 43 GB are user
accessible), plus a microSD slot for up to 512 GB more. Both phones are
launching with Android 11 out of the box.
The phone supports HD Voice, along with
VoLTE and VoWiFi and can be a Wi-Fi 5 (ac) hotspot for up to 10 devices. It
lacks mmWave connectivity, but sub-6 5G should still be plenty fast. Additionally,
the TCL 30 XE has a 3.5 mm headphone jack, but only a single speaker (1W). The
USB-C port supports the same 18W charging for the 4,500 mAh battery and again
the charger is supplied in the retail package.
The TCL 30 V 5G and TCL 30 XE 5G will
become available in the US in the coming weeks, pricing will be announced then.
The XE will be launched on other US carriers later this year. These two phones
are just a glimpse of what’s to come from the TCL 30 series – more of them will
be unveiled at the MWC (which starts at the end of February).
