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00:00Okay, so this is the TCL 40 NEXT Paper.
00:03And at first glance,
00:04it might not appear to be a particularly special phone.
00:06Like this is a $200 budget Android phone.
00:09It's got a 5,000 milliamp hour battery,
00:11a pretty standard issue, 50 megapixel main camera,
00:14flanked by a five megapixel ultra wide
00:16and a two megapixel macro.
00:17And inside, a MediaTek G88 processor,
00:20eight gigs of RAM and 256 gigs of storage.
00:23This design is pretty basic.
00:24It's squared up, nothing too offensive,
00:26a solid blue color with some sparkles in it,
00:29but it has exactly one really interesting feature
00:31that's caught my attention.
00:33And that's the screen.
00:34So this screen, you're looking at a 6.78 inch
00:38flat 1080p, 90 Hertz display.
00:41But when you put it up next to another phone,
00:43that's when you immediately notice
00:44something is very different about it.
00:46Mainly that there are no reflections at all, none.
00:51Well, almost none.
00:52So this phone is called the NEXT Paper
00:53because it has what TCL is calling
00:55a full color electronic paper display
00:59to deliver a reflection free,
01:02full color paper-like visual experience,
01:06which looks way better, has much less fatigue on the eyes
01:10and also feels better in the hand.
01:13And so my first thought when I first saw this was,
01:15okay, why doesn't every phone have this?
01:17Like how is it a super cheap budget phone
01:20that's the first one I've seen to pull this off?
01:23And why aren't more phones doing this?
01:25What am I missing here?
01:27And so of course I had to use it
01:29to get all of these answers.
01:30So, okay, TCL calls it the NEXT Paper
01:33because they'd like you to think of it
01:34as just like an e-paper display.
01:36If you've ever seen a Kindle
01:38or any of the other various e-ink displays out there,
01:41that tech is actually kind of sick.
01:43It's amazing.
01:44It minimizes fatigue on the eyes
01:46and it looks and feels like something's literally printed
01:49on a piece of paper, like a newspaper in front of you.
01:51It works great in all sorts of different lighting
01:53because it's literally rearranging actual ink
01:56underneath the display.
01:57But this is actually not that.
02:00Instead, it's an LCD display with a textured glass on top
02:04and some software tricks to resemble a paper-like display
02:08and deliver almost all of the eye comfort benefits
02:11that come with it.
02:12So the result is basically what looks
02:15like a normal smartphone screen with zero reflections.
02:17And I am very into that.
02:20Look at this screen next to a glossy,
02:23regular smartphone glass screen.
02:24Typically, when I review phones,
02:26I have to spend a lot of effort
02:28shielding these displays from reflections.
02:30That's a little known fact in this.
02:32I guess it's kind of inside baseball,
02:33but when you shoot reflective things, it is a challenge.
02:35I have to angle the phone certain ways.
02:37I have to shoot in certain environments.
02:39And I often use what we call a flag here,
02:42which is literally just to slide it in at a certain angle
02:44to block reflections and make the screen easier to see.
02:48It's a whole thing.
02:49But with this matte display,
02:50I mean, I just don't need any of that special treatment.
02:53Like it's happy to show up at any angle.
02:55And the angles that would normally have a giant reflection,
02:57it just kind of looks a little bit lighter,
03:00a little faded, but still actually readable.
03:02And then when you're straight on
03:04or just kind of regularly reading,
03:05it's nice and soft and it's less stressful on the eyes.
03:08It is kind of weirdly a little bit paper-like,
03:11like some of those paper-like displays.
03:13So almost all of this is enabled by hardware.
03:16So there are a bunch of extra layers
03:19between the actual LCD display and you,
03:22including this textured glass.
03:24And so that's all what gives it this anti-reflective look.
03:28There's also some other benefits
03:29like physically limiting the amount of blue light
03:32that makes it through.
03:33So instead of a special mode in the software,
03:34there is just physically less blue light
03:37making it through an additional filter into your eyes.
03:39And another underrated one, the feel.
03:41I mean, literally the way the glass feels under your finger,
03:45it kind of has this soft touch effect
03:48thanks to the slight texture.
03:49So you can actually see the difference
03:50up at the cutout at the top.
03:51You obviously can't do textured glass
03:53over the front facing camera
03:54because that would ruin the photos.
03:56Not that they're amazing photos in the first place,
03:58but that's the most obvious spot
04:00where you can see that difference
04:01between the matte finish and glossy glass.
04:04And my finger just runs over this glass
04:07almost the same way that it does on the back of the phone.
04:10Okay.
04:16So I think all this shaping up to be pretty cool.
04:20The matte finish, the basically zero reflections,
04:23the much lower eye strain, the soft touch finish.
04:27There's also stylus supports as TCL makes a stylus
04:30that actually works with this type of screen.
04:31So what's the catch?
04:33Why don't more phones have this on them?
04:38And you're probably one step ahead of me already,
04:40which is, yeah, there are some downsides.
04:43So first of all, a bunch of extra layers
04:45on the display itself
04:46is gonna have some obvious drawbacks,
04:47but mainly it's just that they're cutting a lot of light.
04:49Like it hurts a lot of sharpness
04:52and just total light getting through to you.
04:53So this is the absolute maximum 100% brightness
04:56of this screen and it's 450 nits.
04:59So it's good enough to read indoors as you've seen,
05:02but outdoors it's gonna get pretty quickly washed out
05:04and is disappointingly dim.
05:06Now, again, this is a $200 phone.
05:08So I think if this was an even higher end phone
05:10with a brighter LCD or an OLED back there,
05:13maybe it could solve or help some of these issues,
05:15but that wouldn't fix the other one, which is sharpness.
05:18So this is a 1080p display, as I've said,
05:21but it doesn't even really look like that.
05:23I mean, I think if I asked you
05:24what resolution you think this is,
05:26or if I did a blind test or something,
05:27it would compare pretty closely to a 720p display.
05:30I mean, text is soft, edges of things are soft,
05:33all the corners are soft.
05:34It just all kind of has a little bit of a glow
05:36to the edges, which again, makes things nice
05:38and easy to look at, like nothing as harsh
05:40or super bright or fatiguing on the eyes.
05:42But if it's a sharp photo or a video detail you're after,
05:44then putting a bunch of layers between your eyeballs
05:47and the actual display is not the best way
05:49to see those details.
05:50And then same thing with contrast,
05:51just because of how much brightness is limited,
05:53the lack of contrast becomes really obvious.
05:55This one's rated at just 1500 to one contrast ratio,
05:58which even when compared to other budget phones
06:01is not that great.
06:01Oh, and then screen protectors.
06:02People usually put screen protectors on their phones
06:04and this one would obviously not make sense
06:07to put a screen protector on.
06:08So suddenly in this world of feature rich smartphones
06:11with all these big, bright, clear displays,
06:13this goes from being an advantage to being a niche feature
06:17because most people aren't willing to sacrifice
06:20the downsides that come with maybe a little bit
06:22less eye strain and less reflections for a matte display.
06:25This isn't like a desktop screen
06:28where most people are buying it just based on the panel
06:31and the visual display properties.
06:33There's a bunch of stuff about a phone people care about
06:36and turns out people do not like that trade off.
06:39So I've talked about all kinds of other niche features
06:41in the smartphone world and how they're awesome,
06:43but won't actually sell a ton of phones.
06:46This is like the perfect addition to that pile.
06:48I mean, TCL has these special next paper modes
06:51in the software and when you turn one of them on,
06:54one's called color paper and it goes the extra mile
06:57to turn down saturation a little bit
06:59and reduce the extra vibrant colors.
07:01It adds some texture and everything,
07:03it literally looks like your smartphone screen
07:05is like a colored piece of paper
07:07with like your icons in colored ink moving around.
07:09And then you can go all the way up to ink paper,
07:12which goes full black and white.
07:13It seems silly to most people,
07:14but when you compare it to an actual e-ink display,
07:18that's when it looks amazing.
07:20Like an actual e-reader is the least fatiguing version
07:23on your eyes, but if you've ever used one,
07:24you know that frame rates are pretty slow.
07:27Like you can hardly get like even a real page turning
07:30book animation on some of the absolute bleeding edge
07:32best versions we have.
07:34So a smartphone with a special hardware layer
07:36that gets close to the same visual level,
07:38but is 90 Hertz, fully responsive, full color
07:41and can do anything your phone can do
07:43on top of being an e-reader is technically awesome,
07:46which is why TCL also makes a tablet version of this
07:48and another phone version of this.
07:50It is super cool, but almost no one's gonna buy it.
07:53And that's why not every other phone
07:55is going out to do this too, at least for now anyway.
07:59Thanks for watching.
08:00Catch you guys in the next one.
08:02Peace.