TCL 20S Review By Product Review

As long as you don't need 5g, the tcl20s is a powerful budget phone with an immersive display, excellent speakers and a long-lasting battery. The tissue l20s 249.99 is a perfect example of just how much bang you can get for your buck in 2021. It has an incredible display, performs like a champ ships with intuitive software and has a battery that lasts for days. Our editor's choice for budget phones, the Samsung Galaxy a32, 5g 279.99, is a better value overall, since it includes 5g connectivity and guaranteed security updates for four years. But if you don't need 5g and many people still don't. The 20s has a lot to recommend it over the past few years, while people moaned about the lack of originality and innovation in the flagship, smartphone market, the budget phone market evolved rapidly gone are the days of settling for a 250 phone with a low resolution, plastic display a stat icky speaker, half-day battery life and a bloatware-filled out-of-date version of android.

The 20s makes it clear just how far budget phones have come, putting beautiful hardware and capable software within reach for shoppers who don't want to break the bank. The 20s is one of the most attractive devices on the market from its slim camera module to its iridescent finish. Our review unit is blue. It's also available in gray. It's a big thoughtfully, designed phone measuring 6.5 by 3 by 0.4, inches HWD and weighing 7 ounces. That may sound big, but the 20s feels good in your hand, thanks to its curved display and backplate on the front of the phone you'll find a 6.5 inch curved LCD with a small hole punch for the selfie camera display resolution clocks in at 2400 by 1080, pixels color accuracy is spot on and the display is bright enough to see in direct sunlight. TCL is among the world's largest producer of television displays and that expertise shines through in the 20s screen.

The company's customs vision display engine works, miracles on the LCD colors are rich and vivid and blacks are inky and immersive. It may not have a 90 hertz refresh rate like the similarly priced one plus nor then 205 g 239.99, but the 20s LCD otherwise surpasses all the Emil displays. We've seen on budget and mid-range phones, the backplate is made of plastic, but could easily be mistaken for glass, its slight texture doesn't get smudged by fingerprints and the iridescent finish hides small scratch as well. A svelte module of four vertically stacked camera sensors protrudes from the upper left corner. The TCL trademark is arranged vertically in the lower left corner.

The top edge holds a 3.5 millimeters headphone jack, an USB charging port and dual speaker. Grilles are on the bottom on the left. Edge you'll find a sim micros slot, along with a convenience key that opens the Google Assistant by default and can be remapped to open most pre-installed apps a power button with an integrated fingerprint sensor and a volume rocker are on the right edge. The fingerprint sensor is fast and accurate. Durability is a mixed bag.

The 20s plastic, backplate and chassis should survive, minor, drops and dings unscathed. Its curved display is constructed of strength and glass and should be able to withstand a bit of jostling without much damage, but a hard drop will probably crack it. The 20s has an ip52 rating, so it should be fine with sweat and small splashes. If you drop it in the pool or tub, though you'll probably be shopping for a new phone. The TCL 20s is available, unlocked and has extensive 4g LTE band support, including band 71 for T-Mobile.

It works on all the major U. S. carriers and most Minos VoLTE is also on board. As 5g phones become more affordable. You may wonder whether it's even worth buying a 4g phone in 2021.

It's a valid question and one we can't answer definitively, though all the major carriers promote their 5g speeds. The vast majority of their networks are still LTE and will continue to be so for at least the next five years. If you live in a large city, you're likely to see to be benefits of 5g sooner than someone who lives in a rural area, wherever you live, if reliable connectivity matters more than superfast speeds, we believe LTE networks will serve your needs. Just fine. The tcl20s snapdragon x12 modem is capable of fast LTE speeds.

Thanks to its advanced carrier, aggregation 4x4, MIMO and 256 cam encoding. We tested the phone on us mobile's network and encountered no issues streaming. HD, video or lossless audio call quality is excellent. The earpiece has a maximum volume of 84 decibels, which is loud enough to hear on busy streets. Our test calls were made on a windy.

Rooftop and noise cancellation work perfectly. The stereo speakers are a nice perk for a budget phone. They have a peak volume of 94 decibels and actually sound pretty good. The sound stage is immersive and there's lush timbre with mid pushed to the front and a slight rumble of bass if you'd rather use headphones. The 20s also has Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity with DAC and apex low latency encoding for hi-res audio there's. Also, dual-band.

Wi-Fi NFC for mobile payments is not included. The four cameras on the back of the phone consist of a 64 mp primary sensor, a 8mp wide-angle sensor, a 2mp macro sensor and a 2mp depth sensor. The front-facing selfie camera clocks in at 16 mp. The primary lens does a tolerable job. With enough light, our test photos were fine for sharing on social media, but we noticed several issues when examining them at full size.

Colors were vivid, but over saturated and noise crept into the shadows. In our high contrast shots, there was significant ghosting in several shots. Our daylight test, shots with the wide-angle lens were just okay. In addition to the issues we encountered in photos taken with the primary lens, the depth of field was slightly shallow, and we noticed minor distortion in most of our test photos. Low light performance is mediocre, with both the primary and wide-angle lenses.

Blurring edge noise and clipping were noticeable in all our test photos. We also noticed complex distortion in several photos taken with the wide-angle lens. Despite our best attempts, our test photos with the macro lens were just awful. Every photo was flat and blurry. Several photos had significant fringing and one of our macro shots of a flower transformed into a giant red blob, thanks in part to a machine learning error with good light.

The front-facing camera takes a solid selfie portrait mode is underwhelming, ears, were clipped, hats, cropped off and even part of a shoulder became background in several of our test shots, but every budget phone other than the Samsung Galaxy a32 5g stumbles with portrait mode. The tcl20s is powered by the Qualcomm snapdragon 665 mobile platforms, with 4 gigabytes of ram, there are 128 gigabytes of storage on board, which is twice the amount you'll find on the similarly priced Motorola Moto G power. If you need a little more space, you can add up to one terabyte of external storage. With the micros card. The snapdragon 665 means the 20s performs well for a budget phone apps open quickly and multitasking works perfectly.

We noticed minor lag when turning on the phone and with screen transitions, but neither was slow enough to be bothersome. For gaming. We tested the phone with alto's, odyssey and junction impact, although it took a while to low-junction impact. We noticed no issues or skipped frames. During an hour of gameplay alto's odyssey was an absolute joy.

Thanks to the 20s gorgeous display and spunky processor benchmark testing shows the tissue l20s can handle heavy loads without issue on PC mark work, 3.0 a series of tests that emulate everyday smartphone tasks, the phone scored 6654. For comparison, the Moto G power, scored 6209 on the same test, the 20s earned scores of 311 single core SC and 1003 multi-core MC on geek bench 5.0, a benchmark that quantifies raw performance, that's on par with the Moto G power scores of 313, SC and 1435 MC. The 20s5 comma oomph battery can easily get you through two days of moderate use between charges in our battery drain test, which streams HD video over Wi-Fi at full brightness. It eked out 14 hours and 19 minutes before shutting down the Moto G power has a slight edge here, since it lasted for 15 hours, but you'd likely notice any difference in battery life between the two phones with normal use. If you do find yourself needing to top off the battery in a hurry, the 20s supports 18 watts fast charging.

Unsurprisingly, wireless charging is not available. The TCL 20s ships with android 11 and the tissue Lew overlay TCL's custom skin continues to improve with each update and adds many helpful features to the stock android experience you can customize the always on display switch. The navigation bar for left or right hand, use and tweak the quick settings menu. If you swipe up with two fingers, you'll also find a new privacy app where you can hide sensitive files and apps. When android 12 is released in a few months, the 20s will get the upgrade you'll also get two years of regular security updates.

TCL's upgrade and update policy are like Motorola and are fine for a budget phone, but we wish it would follow. Samsung's lead on the galaxy a32 5g by supplying two years of OS upgrades and four years of security updates. If you're shopping for a LTE phone, the tcl20s is an incredible choice. It offers plenty of power for the average user, multi-day battery life and a stunning display the cameras aren't the best, but for a budget phone they do well enough. We wish the phone had better water protection and a more generous software upgrade policy, but neither feature is common at this price, if you're willing to spend slightly more the Samsung Galaxy, 832 5g remains our editor's choice award for budget phones, although it lacks the TCL 20s gorgeous display.

It has similar performance slightly better cameras, a more generous software upgrade policy and 5g connectivity with future-proof c-band support, but with a lot of features for less than 250, the 20s is a strong contender. The 20s is a strong contender. The dollar.

Source : Product Review