TCL 10 5G UW - Complete Review! (Verizon) By Kevin Breeze

Hi everyone- this is Kevin here, coming at you with my review of the TCL 10 5g UW. Now I'd like to thank TCL for sending this out to me as a review sample all opinions expressed in this video, though, are completely my own now. The first thing I'd like to mention this device is the name. I know that there were quite a few people in my first impressions, video that seemed a bit confused about this very long name that the phone does have now. It actually does make a bit of sense. First thing is TCL, that's the name of the company that made the phone.

This phone is part of the 10 series. The phone has 5g compatibility, and this phone in particular, unlike some other options out there- has support for ultra-wide band 5g. So that's why there's an UW at the end, so this phone is actually being offered at Verizon for 3.99. I'm sure, though, as time goes on, and maybe even right now, there are different promotions going on so most likely. You probably won't be paying full price for this phone, however, and I'll explain it more.

As I go through this video, it is well worth the price now this device was launched in october 2020, so just in time for the holiday season, and if you haven't been keeping up with TCL this year, they have been very busy launching a variety of different mid-range devices under their own brand name. Now, TCL does also own Alcatel, and they previously made phones under the blackberry brand. So the company certainly is no stranger when it comes to making mobile devices. Now with this device, we're getting a 6.53 inch display. So a pretty big display here.

It is an IPS lcd though, and it is not AMOLED or OLED, but that being said, I think it does still look very good. It gets nice and bright things. Do look nice and crisp and clear here, since it is a 1080p panel, we're getting a PPI of 395. , a 19 and a half by 9 aspect ratios, and we're getting an 83.6 percent screen to body ratio. So the bottom part of the bezel here is a little on the thicker side that is due to a limitation with LCD technology.

So, basically, if the display is LCD, you can only make the bezels so small. So that is one of the benefits that comes with amyloid or OLED. Is that typically, you can get even smaller bezels, but overall, I think the device does look very nice. In that sense, the bezels still are pretty tiny, and you can see up in the top left corner here. We do have a hole punch for the front-facing camera now later on in the video I'll show you some photo and video samples from the phone itself, but I do prefer having the hole punch, design here and the actual front facing camera is 16 megapixels now internally, with the phone we're getting a generous 128 gigabytes of internal storage.

So that's quite a bit in fact, that is more storage than you get with the base model iPhone 12. So I definitely respect that that's great to see, and we also get micros card expansion with this phone as well. Now, there's no wireless charging with this device. Unfortunately, but we do have a fingerprint sensor on the back. So, let's give that fingerprint sensor a try, and you can see that was very quick, definitely nice and fast there and then also.

We have face and lock as an option too. So there are different methods to getting into the phone now on the back side of the device. We do have a triple camera setup. We have two flashes as well, and we have a 48 megapixel main camera, an 8 megapixel, ultra-wide angle, camera and a 5 megapixel macro camera. Now this device does support 4k video recording with the main camera on the rear at 30 fps and then for the ultra-wide camera and then the front camera.

We are limited at 1080p at 30fps, but that's totally fine with me now. This device does support portrait mode with both the rear and front cameras as well, which is certainly very nice now, as far as the ram and processor go with this phone we're getting six gigabytes of ram, and we're getting the Qualcomm snapdragon 765 g. So it's actually very impressive that we are getting that processor, especially considering the relatively low MSRP of the device. Now I did run a benchmark test using geek bench 5, and here are the scores, so I got a single core score of 615 and a multi-core score of 1939. So what I recommend doing is downloading geek bench 5 on your current phone running the benchmark test and then comparing those scores to these scores, to see how much of an upgrade this device will be, at least when it comes to performance.

Now the software experience at the moment is android 10, it's pretty much a stock variant of android 10. However, TCL has made some of their own adjustments here and added extra features as well. I also like this launcher that they have, as in the app drawer, for example, the apps are nicely organized, and you can even do some cool things such as arranging by color. I've never seen that before. So you know in this section we have all the red icons, then we kind of get into more of the rainbow icons, blue icons, and it pretty much organizes the icons based on the color wheel.

So that's pretty interesting, and we also have the ability to sort these by installation dates. You can sort them by usage as well, so the apps you use the most will be up towards the top, whereas the ones that you use the least will be towards the bottom. We can also sort alphabetically too, so that's at least one feature that I especially appreciate here with the phone and as far as the software experience goes, I feel like TCL has made the right adjustments to basically complement what we already get with stock android, but at the same time they didn't go overboard, either with the skin, so they're pretty much giving us the best things of stock, but at the same time they're giving us their best features. Now, with this phone we're getting a 4 500 William hour internal battery, so a pretty big battery there, and then we're also getting 18 watt fast charging. In addition, this phone also features NFC.

So if you're, someone that likes to use NFC, then just know that you do get it here with the phone now as far as the actual hardware of the device itself, we do have this nice large display, as I mentioned earlier on in the video. As far as the materials go, the phone is made completely out of plastic minus the display, which is glass, but the phone does feel very solid on the left side of the phone with the slot for the micro SD card and sim card, then on the right side of the phone, with the power button volume down and volume up, then, on the top of the phone we have the 3.5 millimeter headphone jack and with the noise-cancelling microphone on the bottom of the device with the speaker microphone, and we have the USB port and then on the back with the two flashes, the camera module, the fingerprint sensor and the TCL logo. Now this phone does pick up some fingerprints due to it having a reflective back on it, but we have a pretty cool design here as well. So in general I think it's a good. Looking phone, one of the things I do appreciate about this design is that I don't feel like it's overly flashy, and I did have a couple of people mention to me on Twitter that they feel like it's a little generic looking, but in general that doesn't bother me what I'm really looking for when I review devices is getting a phone that is nice, reliable and practical.

So I don't really care a lot personally about various gimmicks, I'm more interested in phones that get the job done when it comes to going on social media browsing the web doing phone calls text messages. So as long as you're able to do all of those things without running into any sort of issues, then I don't really care personally too much about the way the phone looks again. This phone doesn't look bad, that's for sure, but it's definitely more of a practicality first device. I suppose, if you wanted to get a device, that's super flashy, then you might want to consider getting an iPhone now, considering that half the name of this phone has to do with it being a 5g device that works on Verizon's ultra-wideband 5g network. I definitely have to address that in this video and thankfully, where I live in phoenix Arizona, I was able to go downtown phoenix and there was an area just by chance actually, but there was an area where I was able to get ultra-wideband 5g.

What's interesting about this, is that my original plan was to go downtown and then go to the arena where the Phoenix Suns play, because I know for sure that there was a 5g UW tower there, but instead what happened was I ended up going to a restaurant, and I sat outside and literally across the street from this restaurant was a 5g tower that did feature ultra-wide band, so I was able to get the full ultra-wide band experience here with the phone, and it certainly does work. The numbers definitely speak for themselves here. So I understand at this point: 5g is still growing and evolving and especially when it comes to ultra-wide band, that still is fairly limited. But if you do happen to live by ultra-wide band, 5g or if you just want to get a device that is going to work with that- and you want to future-proof yourself, then the tcl105guw will give you that full 5g experience that you're looking for. I do want to clarify, though, that if you don't have 5g in your area that this phone still does work great on LTE and considering the affordable price of this phone you're really not paying a premium either to get 5g support, so you get 5g support.

You get ultra-wideband 5g support as well, but you're not paying hundreds of dollars extra to get those abilities. So this phone is totally good if you plan on only using it on LTE. Now here is the box. The phone does come in. Let's take a look at all the items included inside.

We have a sim card removal tool. We have a TCL 10, 5g UW, quick reference guide. Furthermore, we have an USB cable for charging and data transfer, and we have a TCL branded 18 watt wall adapter when it comes to browsing the web. This phone does offer a very smooth experience, so scrolling here is definitely silky smooth, as you can see. No issues with that.

You can then go to different articles to view more information and having this great looking display here on the phone definitely makes the content viewing experience much better. You can see, for example, the text here is definitely very crisp, so no complaints with that with this device. We do the fingerprint sensor on the back. We also have faced unlock with this phone, and we do have a quad camera setup on the back. The video viewing experience here on the phone is definitely very good.

Things do look nice and crisp and clear, especially on this 1080p screen. Now. One thing that I did notice is that, with the speaker, you only get audio coming out of right here. You don't get any audio. That comes out of the earpiece.

I know there are some other phones out there, like the Moto G power, for example, that do give you stereo sound, but with the TCL 105 gun, you do just get sound coming out of the speaker located right here. I know that because when I was covering my finger over the speaker, I couldn't really hear anything, but that's not really a dealbreaker. The good news, though, is that the speaker that we are getting here is nice and loud and clear, so it doesn't really leave too much to be desired. That's for sure. But if you are looking for a phone that does offer stereo sound, then you aren't necessarily getting it here with this device.

But again for me personally, I don't see it as a deal. Breaker just know, though, what you're getting into the photo and video experience with the TCL 10 5g UW, certainly is adequate in general you're able to take nice looking pictures and videos with the phone so whether you're taking close-up photos or photos of a building or anything around your surroundings. You are going to take pictures and videos that are worth keeping and are worth sharing on social media, so I definitely do not think the photo and video quality is anywhere close to the type of quality that you would get from a flagship phone like the galaxy s20, for example, or the iPhone 12. But then again, this device is a mid-range phone and the quality that you're going to be getting from. It definitely will satisfy the majority of people out there.

I mean even for me as somebody that has a variety of different phones, and I really consider myself to be a power user. I could certainly live with using the cameras on this device, like they certainly get the job done, especially the macro camera. You can take some nice good-looking, close-up pictures of tree bark and different things like that. That's what I was doing in my photo test, but basically these cameras are adequate. So if you are interested in this phone, definitely don't have the cameras be any sort of concern for you.

But let's now take a look at some video samples from the device hi everyone. This is Kevin here coming at you with a test video using the TCL 10 5g UW. So let me know what you think of the video quality and audio quality from the front facing camera at 1080p from this phone. Now it is pretty bright out right now, so you can see before I was in the shade now, I'm in the sunlight and the phone does do a decent job of picking up. That contrast there- and here is a test video using the ultra-wide angle, camera with the TCL 10 5 gun.

This is in 1080p. So, with the ultra-wide camera, you can fit a lot more content into the frame. Here's a test, video at 4k at 30 fps with the TCL 10 5g UW. Now in the 4k mode, you are limited at recording videos in five minute increments. So keep that in mind and here's a 1080p video sample using the main camera with the tcl10 5g UW, quick autofocus in video mode.

So in conclusion, is the TCL 10 5g UW worth getting. I would say that this device is a very competitive option. It really comes down to. If you are with Verizon, because this phone, at least at the moment, does appear to be a Verizon exclusive, so if you are with Verizon already, and you're looking to upgrade your phone, and you don't want to spend too much, but at the same time you also want access to their ultra-wide band 5g network, then this phone certainly is an attractive option. Getting back into what I was saying earlier in the video there's, nothing really overly exciting or flashy about this phone.

But that being said for what it's advertised to do, it gets done, and this phone is certainly more of a function over form type of device. So with other devices you might get better build materials like, for example, maybe getting metal around the sides or on the back or glass on the back, for example. But then you have to compromise by getting a processor, that's not as good in a lower amount of ram. I feel like with this device TCL really focused on the things that are most important to people, but then compromising by giving us plastic for the materials in order to save some money and then pass on the discount. So in general I think this is a pretty awesome device from TCL, but this is my review of the TCL 5g UW.

Source : Kevin Breeze