REVIEW: TCL LX 4G Budget Android Smartphone, 18:9 Display! [$20]

A few days ago. We did a review on the Samsung Galaxy, a 10 II, which i think is one of the best value smartphones for around 50 bucks. But if you’re on an even tighter budget believe or not there’s a smartphone that you can pick up without a contract using Amazon Prime for just 19, making this the lowest smartphone that’s a shipped and fulfilled by Amazon directly for the money, specs also aren’t, half bad It’S also kind of interesting, because it’s branded by TCL, which is more widely known for making pretty good value tvs, but this is one of their first times putting their name on a smart phone. However, TCL have actually manufactured many of alka Telles phones. So if you’re familiar with that brand, you may have already experienced some of their handsets in the past. Now for the money we are getting. A 5.3 5 inch display rounds up to about 5.4 inches and it is a tall two by one aspect: ratio or 18 by 9. It also has a quad core processor clocked at one point, one gigahertz, but unfortunately it’s a pretty entry level mediatek chip. We also have Android 8.1 Oreo, which is again decent at this price 16 gigs of built in storage and 2 gigabytes of RAM, taking a closer look at the smart phone. Next, there is some protective film that we can peel off on the rear to give access to the TCL logo. It is a unibody phone, just like most devices these days, which means that the battery is not user, removable and here’s a sticker over the 8 megapixel camera with autofocus and LED flash design here is definitely not flashy, but it does feel pretty solid for the price It’S constructed out of a polycarbonate surface and there is a slight texture on the back cover as well.

That makes the phone at least a little easier to grip and hold doesn’t attract too many fingerprints, and the back is completely flush on the side. Here we have access to a volume rocker and a textured key. That is the power button which is nice to delineate on the very bottom. Here we have the loudspeaker microphone and also the micro USB for charging and then there’s nothing else on the other side, except for the sin, slash microSD expansion slot. You can expand the built in memory up to 512 gigabytes and on the very top there’s. Also, access to a standard, 3.5 millimeter headphone jack battery inside by the way is rated at around 2500 milliamp hours, so not the biggest in the world, but with a slightly lower resolution display, it does last you through a full day of use before you really need To worry about plugging it in now as a quick size comparison here, it is next to the aforementioned galaxy a10 II, which, as you can see, there actually has very similar overall body dimensions despite having a larger screen it’s just it has, of course smaller bezels again, The screen here is around five point: eight inches versus five point, four inches, but overall the kind of body here are about the same, and here is another device at Samsung. Galaxy s8, which you can see, also has pretty similar overall dimensions before we dive deeper into the review. Let’S start with examining the screen a little further.

I do have to point out that this might be one of the more disappointing parts of this handset. I think it ready looks quite good for the price. To be honest, however, what I do have a problem with is Tracfones advertising being blatantly filled with lies, so if we go back to the Amazon page and we go down here to the description and tap on the image here, we can see a pop up. That says: high def images, experience vivid, colors, sharp clarity and higher depth of realism with a five point. Four inch fully laminated HD IPS touchscreen display. So if we break that down, there are three parts fully laminated means that there’s no gap between the glass and the LCD screen underneath pointing out the light. We can see clearly that there is an air gap between the top layer and the screen underneath, which does casts a little bit of shadows. If you are in a really cool air or sunlit environment versus that truly laminated display like they claim, there is no gap between the layers, just adding for a bit more of clarity and it’s a manufacturing process that’s a little bit more expensive. So again, the first part of the advertisement stating laminated is actually false. The second part says HD. Now, what HD means is 720p resolution, but this is in fact not a 720p display to be more specific, it’s 480 by 854 for resolution, which again is actually quite average for a phone of this price, but again it’s, tracfone and Amazon’s, ad kind of being deceptive.

There, because it’s, not HD it’s sitting out for eight P and that’s. The highest resolution that you can use to watch say YouTube videos with third part of the statement, says IPS. What IPS means is in plane, switching it’s, a technology used by LCD screens to create wider viewing angles where, if we tilt the screen because of the IPS technology, we should still be able to see colors represented just like we’re looking at it head on. But actually this is a regular TN panel it’s, not IPS. I say that because, as we tilt the screen, you can see how the colors do pretty quickly fade out, just like on a slightly older displays from yesteryear where, if we look at it from kind of a top down angle, you can see how the colors should Still be preserved, as opposed to becoming kind of black and out so this is in fact not a IPS display it’s a slightly cheaper, regular T and display again for the price it’s already a great phone. I just don’t understand why tracfone has to directly lie and give us a statement that’s. Basically, a hundred percent false it’s, not fully laminated it’s, not HD and it’s, not IPs, so moving past that slightly disappointing ad print. We can take a closer look now at the performance of the phone and as a whole, I would say it’s decent for an entry level device. It is a very stock phone.

So luckily that means TCL hasn’t really installed their custom software on top of Android 8.1. So we do have the traditional drawer here to swipe up. Just like a Android 1 device would track down. A notification. Shade also gives us access to quick shortcuts. In terms of software, we have all the regular Google Apps installed by default, including access to YouTube. There is a Gmail Chrome so and so forth, but there’s also a handful of some bloatware from tracfone, as well as a handful of trial games, a coin master, solitaire there’s also crosswords Idol City Idol farm. All of these are installed by default from tracfone and TCL. Now, if we take a look at the camera performance first, we can double tap here to launch into the camera it’s, not as basic as you’d think there is actually access to HDR and 8 megapixels for the camera resolution is actually quite good for the price again Compared to say the Samsung Galaxy, a 10 e, which is have phone that sells for more than twice the price. It also has an 8 megapixel sensor. The neat trick that TCL design is, you can swipe from any edge the top or the bottom, to bring up a virtual slider area very similar to Nokia’s Lumia phones in the past. That gives you a carousel view that are easier to click. Using just one hand. Additional settings include a panoramic mode, there’s also a light trace mode and under advanced settings.

You can further change things like he is for the HD quality videos that you can capture and things like that. Overall quality is actually pretty decent as long as you hold still and there’s plenty of light around you again. There is an optical image stabilization, but for a budget phone I would say, the camera quality is above average. Now some competitors that come to mind in the same and a budget territory would be the xiaomi redmi 7, a very similar specs at two gigabytes of ram. But the xiaomi does sell for 89, which is of course, already considered a cheap phone, but again at 20 bucks. It just proves that the TCL LX is a really exceptional value, some other samples. Here again, you do have to be patient, because sometimes it takes a split second for the images to be taken again. The processor isn’t the fastest thing in the world so just make sure you wait a split second longer for it to take the image and on a don’t shake during that process, but afterwards again colors themselves are represented. I would say fairly well for the price. The lock screen of the LX has also been customized by TCL, where we see some quick launch shortcuts that we can jump into just by double tapping or dragging up from the bottom of the display. So things like doing a quick Google search, dialer pad messenger camera can all be accessed now, as a budget phone.

Of course, we don’t have any biometrics on this device, so there is no fingerprint scanner, although you can always use a pattern or password instead. Now, if we do a quick demo of video playback let’s try to jump into YouTube. One of the best attributes of this phone is going to be its Wi Fi reception strength. Just because it is made entirely out of plastic. It seems like we’re always able to get nearly full bars of reception. Even the router is actually quite far away from this room right now. The Wi Fi strength is actually a little bit stronger, even than the Samsung Galaxy. A 10 e, so let’s play back some sound and try out the speaker here: Music, Music Applause, Music Applause, Music to have access to all the goodies with Android 8.1, including split screen. Multitasking such as going into say a Google search here, and you can see that both apps are running. It is going to be a slightly sluggish at first. Just because again, the ran is a little on the low side. Same thing goes with the processor, but you are able to multitask on this device thanks to the use of Android 8.1 as the OS and again with this taller aspect ratio. It does indeed work. If you want to access that feature, we do also have access to picture and picture mode by the way. So that means, if we go back into the home screen, the music or the video still plays back as a floating image.

In the background and that’s part of a feature that all Android or yo phones and above supports, so if we jump into Chrome, for instance, let’s see how long it takes a load back, a complex page like the verge, so obviously it’s, not lightning, fast or instantaneous. But it’s actually decent speed and everything is still again fairly readable. Let’S, try loading back Amazon here’s, the full desktop version of the site, so indeed it’s still loading along a few years ago. Phones for 20 bucks were, you know, either dumb phones or devices with super outdated processors that couldn’t even load a webpage without giving us checker boards. But now we can see actually a surprisingly usable experience, obviously it’s not going to be as fluid as the latest flagships, but we are talking about a huge price difference here. We do have a handful of kind of apps open in the background it still is opened up, as you can see there if we’re jumping back so the two gigabytes of ram is actually being used fairly effectively by the system which is nice to see. There are a handful of unique wallpapers at TCL has built on, in which we can take a quick look at here, so some by tracfone and then some from TCL that you can kind of cycle through and obviously download more. If you don’t, like the numbers that you see here last thing, that we can take a look at would be probably gaming performance and some of the pre installed apps are good kind of demo.

Of that, overall, I would say for light gaming. It does work alright, but don’t really, you know, use this for extensive gaming, such as pub G, where asphalt 9 on those types of games. It will be, you know: very sluggish and frame rates are going to be quite low, just because we are talking about pretty much the most entry level configure in terms of the processor on here from mediatek overall again, it’s functional just be a bit more patient in Terms of loading things back once they are open again for relatively simple titles, especially for puzzle type games strategy games. It does still work Crossy Road, it will be still functional and again for simpler games and titles. It actually does alright and again it’s still a pretty enjoyable experience, thanks who are relatively immersive and large screen has a secondary phone as a backup phone for kids or the elderly it’s more than acceptable, and there are again some occasional moments of sluggishness or hesitation here And there drop frames but it’s not going to kill you from using the device which, again for the price, is already a success. So you can check out more details if you are interested in the links down below, but for now that’s been our video that’s been the extremely affordable TC llx, a twenty dollar Android smartphone.



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