You can finally buy TCL’s new 30XE ​​5G and 30V 5G midrange

TCL kicked off 2022 by announcing two new smartphones for the US market – the TCL 30XE ​​5G and the TCL 30 V 5G. While the latter has been on sale for a few weeks as a Verizon exclusive, it’s only now that TCL has revealed its plans for the 30XE ​​5G. Today, the company announced that the TCL 30XE ​​5G will be available to US consumers starting February 25, 2022. The phone is available through T-Mobile and its subsidiary Metro By T-Mobile for roughly the same price.

TCL 30XE ​​5G

The TCL 30XE ​​5G clarifies its midrange intentions with specs that include a powerful MediaTek processor, high refresh rate display, and quad rear cameras. This is a fairly large phone with a 6.52-inch display that supports 90Hz refresh rate, 180Hz touch sampling rate, and HDR. To reduce costs, TCL has chosen not to equip the phone with an FHD+ panel, so you have to settle for an HD+ panel (1600 x 720 pixels) with a V-shaped notch for the front camera.

The system-on-chip referred to here is the The MediaTek Dimensity 700 chip which is less than a year old and was first found in use on the Realme 8 5G, launched last April. It’s a reasonably efficient chip based on a 7nm manufacturing process and is more than capable of handling day-to-day tasks without breaking a sweat. Unfortunately, the phone comes with just 64GB of internal storage (of which only 43GB is usable) with no mention of a 128GB option. Fortunately, you have the option of inserting a microSD card and expanding the capacity from storage at 512 GB.

The three rear-facing cameras of the TCL 30XE ​​5G include a 13 MP main camera and two 2 MP sensors that act as depth and macro sensors. The main camera does the heavy lifting. TCL also added an LED flash for those occasional low-light shots. For selfies, the front camera gets an 8MP sensor. Video recording using the front and rear cameras reaches 1080p 30 frames per second (fps).

For such a big phone, we expected the TCL 30XE ​​5G to come with a bigger battery than the 4,500mAh unit that TCL decided to go with. The phone comes with an 18-watt charger that takes just over 2.5 hours for a 0-100% charge. The phone’s biometric authentication features include a rear panel-mounted fingerprint scanner and support for face unlock. The 5G-capable phone supports T-Mobile 5G and can also fall back to LTE (and 3G) networks when needed. However, the spec sheet does not mention support for 5G mmWave. The TCL 30XE ​​5G will launch with a near-stock version of Android 11, with an update to Android 12 likely in the future.

Price and availability

You can buy the TCL 30XE ​​5G starting February 25, 2022. The phone will arrive first on T-Mobile and Metro By T-Mobile, followed by a wider launch on other networks. The phone is priced just below the $200 mark. T-Mobile users can get the phone for $198, while Metro By T-Mobile users will have to shell out a bit more ($200) for the phone. As of now, the phone only seems to be available in one color variant called Shadow Black.

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