TCL has been making some inroads in the smartphone market. Their TCL 10 Series now retails at Verizon, with the TCL 10 5G being the most affordable 5G handset there, along with the most exciting camera hardware under $400, according to our Uber HW Camera ranking.
At CES 2021, TCL released the TCL 20 5G, their next-generation affordable 5G phone, destined to reinforce TCL’s position in that space further.
The TCL 20 5G is a 6.67-inch (FHD) smartphone powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 690 5G platform that gives it good performance for the price.
We’ll analyze the triple-camera setup when more information surfaces, but we expect it to be at least as good, if not slightly better, than last year’s. The 8 Megapixel Selfie camera isn’t much to talk about and is there to provide minimal functionality.
That said, the 4500 mAh battery is very decent, and the whole package is expected to land at around $360, although the price has not been confirmed, so we’re speculating here.
At approximately $180, the TCL 20 SE would cost about half the TCL 20 5G price. It has a larger 6.85-inch FHD display, but we’re unsure how the display quality is affected by the overall bill-of-material (BOM). The 5000 mAh battery is slightly larger than the TCL 20 5G’s.
The technical data we’ve looked at shows a less powerful camera system, although still impressive for that price point. The computing platform is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 460, which is not as performant as the Snapdragon 690, but the performance “for the price” (speed per dollar) could be higher. That’s really what the game is about below $200.