TCL 60 XE NXTPAPER 5G Cell Phone, AT&T, T-Mobile & Verizon Unlocked Android Smartphone, 8GB+256GB, 6.8″ 120Hz Paper-Like Display, AI Features, 5010mAh Battery, Advanced Camera System, Space Blue

Read what I think of it.
TW: I’m an adult reviewing a phone. (TL;DR at the bottom)I was looking for a smartphone replacement for my wife, and I come across this bad boy. Look, what I was looking for was simple. What is the most bang for my buck, and I set a hard limit of $300. While pondering I came across this device and did some of my own personal research, (youtube, google, reading other’s reviews), and I concluded the following to be the reason I’d suggest this phone to those with, the right mindset.-What are we buying?An affordable smartphone-How is the price?As of my purchase $230 (taxes included/ CA USA)-What’s with the screen?Its pretty neat huh? Its a matte finish (smooth like paper) screen at 120hz at 1080 x 2400. It can do some cool book reading lighting, both with color or black and white. Its neat and sweet <3-Big ass camera!Yeah its pretty big, and its alright! It does the job fast and well, could be better if you know how to! If you know how to you a camera with your understanding of photography, might be in your wheel house!-How does the battery do?Not too bad actually, its rather surprising being able to brain rot on a lazy day all day and still be fine at 30% by dinner time. This VERY OBVIOUSLY depends on your brightness settings, volume, etc. (40Vol, 60%Brightness for me)-Is it durable?Buy a damn case, just be smart like with all phones and put it in a case. That being said, yeah its nice, I really like the finish on the back. It feels rather premium in hand, like you fancy or something!▕╮╭┻┻╮╭┻┻╮╭▕╮╲▕╯┃╭╮┃┃╭╮┃╰▕╯╭▏▕╭┻┻┻┛┗┻┻┛ ╰▏▕╰━━━┓┈┈┈╭╮▕╭╮▏▕╭╮╰┳┳┳┳╯╰╯▕╰╯▏▕╰╯┈┗┛┗┛┈╭╮▕╮┈▏TL;DR: Yeah, for $200 bucks you best bet your butt its worth it. Get one and a case, it does the job well enough.

Fantastic and Impressive
I’d give this a 3.5 if I could, but I’m rounding up to 4 since a flat 3 would be too low of a score. It’s *almost* a 4, but there were a few poor design decisions made that don’t quite make it a solid 4. Note that I’m more or less one of those “never give something a perfect score unless it makes you react like Anton Ego eating ratatouille” kind of people, so effectively I think my rating would be the average person’s 5/5.It’s a great phone for the price, very responsive and fast to process. Apps open pretty much instantly, and processing photos from the camera doesn’t lag the system at all. The screen is absolutely stunning, and the paper texture feels wonderful to touch. It’s great to not have to deal with glare, and the screen is soft and dim enough to not hurt the eyes while still being perfectly visible, even when wearing UV sunglasses or during a blindingly sunny day, sunglasses or not. The paper texture makes the screen look very soft, almost dreamy, but not blurry, almost like an actual glowing piece of paper, even outside of the e-reader mode. I’m incredibly impressed, I’ve never seen anything like it, I didn’t know technology like this was possible, it’s that impressive.I don’t do much with my phone, so even if I could comfortably afford a high-end one, I’d still have a hard time justifying the price. This phone gives me the feeling of luxury without the guilt of having burned a cool grand on a device that basically only needs to work as a dumbphone that can also take pictures and play solitaire. This is going to sound cheesy, but it almost feels like I’m cheating!Downsides:- Touch sensitivity is pretty low, I often have to attempt tapping something multiple times before it finally registers. I didn’t have this problem at all with my previous phone, and it’s slightly frustrating. It also seems somewhat biased on interpreting input as a swipe rather than a tap, which is annoying in games that distinguish the two gestures as being different kinds of input. Sometimes when I tap, it counts as a very short swipe.- Very unresponsive to wake gestures. Half of the time when I pick it up, the screen doesn’t automatically turn on. I can even shake it as much as I want, flick it back and forth over and over, it still doesn’t register. Maybe I could get used to just pressing the button, but then half the time, it does respond to the wake gesture and then pressing the button would just put it back to sleep, so you can never actually adapt to any consistent way to wake it up. If this sounds too nitpicky, trust me, after a while, the frustration builds. This might even be the biggest issue I have with the phone.- The battery indicator does not show you the actual battery percentage anywhere in the UI except for when you actually plug it in (which also plays an annoying animation that covers the screen), it’s just the standard single bar that vaguely decreases, and I can’t find a setting to change that anywhere. I do not know why they’re so adamant on hiding the battery percentage from me. You can only see it if you open up the strange, uninstallable “Smart Manager” app.- Not a lot of case options on the market, and some of the cases hide the switch that turn the phone’s e-reader mode on (which isn’t that bad since I don’t think I’ll ever use it anyway). None of the cases I looked at actually had a cover for the USB port, which I usually prefer on my case.Final thoughts:Overall, all of my criticisms are about fairly insubstantial things that don’t do much to take away the experience, and I’m extremely satisfied with my purchase, I’d buy it all over again without a second thought, and I’m actually glad I couldn’t find a cheap and recent enough Galaxy that worked with Verizon, because from what I gather from my research on budget phones, this is genuinely the best one on the market right now, however overshadowed in popularity by bigger brands.Also, reading this review back to myself, I promise I’m not an LLM, lol.