After investing heavily in the television market, TCL is now ready to move into the smartphone industry. For this, it announced on Monday (6) during CES 2020, the three new models of handsets with its brand: the TCL 10 Pro, TCL 10L and TCL 10 5G. All of them are aimed at the Premium segment, but priced below $500. The Chinese manufacturer’s goal is to be a major player in the crowded mobile market.
For now, few details about these devices have been released. However, what seems to be the most interesting of them is the TCL 10 Pro, which features a very similar design to the Galaxy S10, four rear cameras, a biometric sensor and a rare 3.5 mm headphone jack. The company did not provide further details about the hardware of the equipment, but admitted that, although this is the company’s flagship, it does not intend to compete with more advanced releases from Apple and Samsung, for example, but to ensure a good quality device to compete on a level playing field with other smartphones under $500. That’s because the company is aware that it is a newcomer in the business, so no one expects it to arrive as a strong competitor among the most advanced mobile phones in the market.
The TCL 10L and TCL 10 5G are basically the same smartphone, with more “basic” settings than the TCL 10 Pro. The only thing known about them for now is that the TCL 10 5G will use a Snapdragon 700 series Qualcomm processor – probably the Snapdragon 765, which already has a modem built into 5G own SoC. Like the 10 Pro, these two devices will also have four rear cameras and a biometric sensor, but probably the cameras on these devices won’t be the same as those used at the top of the line.
Nor did the company elaborate on pricing, saying only that all of its smartphones will cost less than $500. In addition, the difference from the TCL 10 Pro to the other two simpler models will be quite considerable – which can make the TCL 10 5G the cheapest smartphone with 5G support on the market.
In addition to the three models, the Chinese company also brought to CES the prototype of its own folding smartphone. The project is still in its infancy and the company is in no hurry to bring the device to market. It said it will follow a strategy of gradually developing the technology and only officially launching the device when it is running without bugs. But there is potential there: one of the big reasons why the brand has been so successful in the television industry is the quality of the screen of its devices, so we can expect it to bring some interesting innovation to the folding device industry.
Despite showing its smartphones at CES, the company has warned that it will reveal more details about them only during MWC, which will take place in February in the city of Barcelona. Therefore, only next month we should have information on hardware specifications of the handsets, selling price and when they will hit the market.
Source: The Verge