TCL’s 10 5G UW | A Phone with Room to Grow By Reviews.org

(upbeat music) - Ever date someone who is actually just a really good person right now, but they have some growing to do? I mean, you like who they are right now, but you really see their potential and are looking forward to where they're going in life. That's TCL's 5G UW on Verizon. Exclusive to Verizon, this version of TCL's 5G phone has a lot going for it if you buy it now, but there are some things you may have to wait on for it to reach its full potential. I'm going to pack a few weeks worth of testing into a few minute review for you. So think of it as a tech speed date with Verizon's TCL 10 5G UW. (upbeat music) Hey, if any of these videos have helped you, please consider hitting us with the thumbs up, hit that subscribe and hit that notification bell so you'll be notified when we upload the latest videos.

(upbeat music) So right out of the gate, you need to know that you're getting a TCL phone and this is a generation one device, generation one of their own branded devices to be exact. Normally, I'd tell the average user to avoid first gen devices, but I've tested TCL's 10L, 10 Pro and the Revvl 5G which is T-Mobile's branded version of TCL 5G devices and they're all solid performers. Of course, we'll have to see over time how well they hold up, but in the short term, all things considered, there's much more to love than hate. Now, TCL is known to most people probably for their displays and they've brought their acumen when it comes to that area to this area of the 5G UW. It's a 6 1/2 inch full HD plus display.

It is large and bright and contrasty and is driven by their NXTVISION technology, which you can turn on and off. Now, when I first reviewed the 10L and 10 Pro, NXTVISION was a bit inconsistent across the devices. With it being turned on or off, it may affect the luminance of the display significantly when watching darker programming like the "Witcher" or "Daredevil". I ended up having to turn it off for watching those shows which left colors a bit flat and in some cases, a bit washed. This go round, NXTVISION produced solid HDR like images without crushing the brightness or black levels.

Turning on NXTVISION when watching the "Witcher" on the UWU expands the color depth of the content, but whether that is good is going to be subjective. The colors are definitely warmer and some people may prefer more natural skin tones you'll see when the feature's turned off. "Daredevil" is finished in post-production in HDR and though Netflix doesn't support HDR on mobile yet, the show was watchable despite its being one of the shows on Netflix with a lot of dark scenes and the vibrancy of the colors was notable. So my advice, play with NXTVISION, watch a few minutes of your favorite show with it on, watch a few minutes with it off and see which mode suits you. It should be noted that when it comes to cartoons and other animated content, there's little perceptible difference with it on or off.

Also on the front of the display, you're going to get a 16 megapixel front facing camera. I took photos with it in low light and in more favorable conditions and the experience was a good one. As you can see in these low-light photos, a solid amount of detail was captured while noise in the image was relatively low. The images are crisp and it is only when you zoom in that they soften a bit. These photos were taken around 5:00 a.

m outdoors with some grounds lighting illuminating the darkness. In these images here, I was in a hallway which had no light except the exit sign which cast a green tint on everything in that corridor. There was less light here and you can definitely see more noise in these images and they were softer, but overall they're still quite fine for sharing on social media channels. Rounding out the tech, on the front is the speaker grill for calls only, no dual stereo speakers on this phone. Right side of the phone you'll get a power button and volume rocker, left side of the phone is the SIM tray with expandable storage.

Top of the phone, you're get a microphone and you're gonna get the 3 1/2 millimeter audio jack. On the bottom, you'll get a USB-C charge port, microphone and mono speaker. The mono speaker does get plenty loud, but, of course, it suffers from the issue all mono speaker setups do and that is audio is firing away from you. Now, a lot of tech does that, most notably your TVs, but the difference here is that your TVs are generally in front of a wall or mounted to one so what happens is the sound has a surface to immediately bounce off and come at you bro. When listening to a down fire in mono speaker that audio is firing at the ground or a table if you're holding the phone in portrait mode or firing away from you into infinity if you're holding it in landscape.

The back of the phone is where we get to those cameras. Three of them, 48 megapixel wide angle, eight megapixels super wide and a five megapixel macro. The macro is okay. In ideal conditions, the images it captures aren't bad at all, but they are a tad soft, but you probably won't notice that on the display unless you go pixel peeping. So the only thing with the macro lens, and I've seen this across their other macro lenses on the other models, is that you're going to get a green cast, a green tint on the phone, some vignetting is what is kind of typically referred to, but in this case with the green cast so you definitely want to look out for that.

They do capture a nice amount of detail though. As you can see in this image of my glasses case on the unfinished pine desk, you can clearly see the texture in the case and grain on the desk. One cool feature of the photo gallery app as you're looking through your photos is that you can turn the NXTVISION enhancement for the images on and off and see what they look like. Some photos like this macro, the difference is negligible and some photos like these green room shots, the difference is more apparent. But let's get to the main camera.

There is no optical image stabilization here, but you do get a decent camera for your money. This is low light shot is detailed and sharp as is this shot of a cloudy sky in the middle of the day. This pink flower looks beautiful and even this deeply colored fuchsia flower maintains much of its detailed though a tad soft. It's when we hit that dreaded red that the shortcomings come to the fore. In all fairness, most cameras have a hard time with these reds as I've stated before, but here we are.

Overall, for most people, specifically those looking to get in on what is Verizon's most inexpensive 5G phone, the cameras here should be good enough. The rest of the user experience is solid though you should know that the phone comes stock with the usual Verizon bloatware. Other than that, TCL really stays out of Google's way for the most part and let you have a fairly close to stock Android 10 experience. TCL has officially said that their phones will receive one update at least and you aren't gonna be hurting for power even without 5G. Battery life out of this 4500mAh battery battery was very solid.

The phone feels peppy, apps launch with only a hint of delay from this Qualcomm Snapdragon 765 G processor. Switching between apps is plenty quick. The main place on this phone you may notice any slowing is in the camera app. There's definitely delay when switching between modes, but we're nitpicking because though it wasn't instant, I grew up in the era of dial-up, you've got mail. Speaking of connections, as I alluded to in the beginning of this review, though this is a solid phone now, you may find one aspect lacking, 5G connectivity.

Verizon's high-speed millimeter wave Ultra Wideband network may be tough to define depending on where you live. Suburbs, urban area, rural, there's no place close to me that millimeter wave is actually deployed and the only one that I could test it out in was Downtown Los Angeles but that's it. Looking at Verizon's map, the rest of the area is either sub-6 or 4G LTE. Those speeds were plenty quick though. What you need to know buying this phone is that the UW and the name is still some ways off from being accessible to you.

Lack of that doesn't mean you're going to suffer for speed. Like I said in the beginning, it just means there's some growing to do until your device reaches its full potential. So in the end, is this phone a good deal? If you're on Verizon and want 5G but don't want to break the bank, absolutely. The 10 5G UW get you in on the high-speed network once it's deployed in your area and then deployed ubiquitously enough to be impactful. So pack your patients because though this is definitely a quality phone, UW really means, for many who may buy it, you're waiting.

That's the internet spelling of you're not the traditional real spelling of you're. (drum music) Hey, if there are any questions I did not answer in this review, please drop them in the comments below. I'll get to them. Love chatting with you guys or girls, you're a wonderful bunch. As always, we don't take it lightly that you've watched with us.

We appreciate you. If there are any things you wanna know about Verizon's rate plans for this phone, what the different 5G rate plans are, you can always check out the main site, reviews. org, where our researchers have put a ton of time into making sure you get quality information. Thank you for watching. I'll catch you on the next video.

Source : Reviews.org