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If you're in the market for a new Android smartphone, you might want to have a close look at the TCL 10 Pro. On the other hand, as tech expert Dave Taylor of https://www.AskDaveTaylor.com/ highlights, while there are some splendid features - including the beautiful screen - there are some significant limitations with the TCL 10 Pro that you'll want to know about before you make a purchase decision. Android 10? Yup But oh, that camera...
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0:00
An Android smartphone from TCL
0:02
Let's check this out. Dave Taylor here, checking out the TCL 10 Pro
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This is one of TCL's very first Android smartphones, and there's a lot to like about it
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but I'm going to be honest, there are some serious issues, too. We'll get to those
0:24
Now, let's start with the specs, first of which is in-screen fingerprint scanner
0:30
I will put my thumb there. Nope. There we go. And it unlocks the phone. So as you can see, it's not 100% reliable, but that's true of all in glass fingerprint sensors so far. It's a tricky challenge. But the specs, the screen, lots of cool stuff. So it's a 6.47 inch FHD Plus curved AMO LED display with Next Vision and HDR 10. So the screen is superb. It's really
0:59
nice and crisp and the phone's responsive and if you want to watch a movie or
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something it's gonna look gorgeous lots of tonight it has adaptive tone and
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reading mode so there's different light systems to help you with your eyes
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and not getting like two wigged out from blue light late at night and stuff and
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it auto adjusts the display they even have eye comfort mode which actually
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manages your blue light which you should enable and all your devices you should be
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thinking about that blue light and trying to minimize it. Now, the camera is actually a strip of four
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different cameras on the back. And it's a 64 megapixel AI quad camera, though I'm not exactly sure
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how that all plays out. But again, we'll come back to that. So at its maximum resolution, and I'll
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show you one of these, it gets 9280 by 6944 pixel images. There's a lot of data. With real-time
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HDR, 16 megapixel super wide angle, a low light camera, a 960 frames per second, super slow motion
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It glass on both sides and it powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 675 with 6g Ram 128 gig of memory and 50 charge in 35 minutes
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It is not a wireless charging device. And they talk about something called reverse chi charging, but just assume it doesn't do anything
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It's really not actually designed to do much at all wireless. So you have your plug that's USBC on the bottom
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In fact, on the bottom, you can see in this close-up, that's also where you put the SIM card
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and there's a couple little cutouts for audio. And then on the right-hand side, there's volume, up, volume down, and the power button
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And on the left-hand side is a function button you can assign to different tasks right now by default
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If I push on it, it doesn't do much at all, which is fine. And then on the top, yay, is a 3.5 millimeter audio jack
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So basic phone functionality, lots to like about this. There's really a lot I like
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And if we go into like about, then we can find out that, let's see, this is running
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It just had an update yesterday. So it is running Android 10, and it's the Snapdragon 675, like I said
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and has all the different cameras and et cetera. All of that's right here on this screen
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super handy to be able to see that. So, what's the problem
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Well, before we get into the problem, let's look at the box. So one of the things I really like is TCL includes a soft rubber case
3:53
I'm not sure you necessarily want to have display greatness across it
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but hey, it's a free case, so you can't complain too much about that. And then also in the box is a SIM removal tool
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and in here is nothing because I already pulled the manuals out
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And then on the bottom you have a USBC charging cable and the actual wall charger
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And that's it, that's all you get. So no earbuds no audio device of any sort you know not even any stickers Come on TCL But you have bigger issues than stickers So the problem with this is not the screen It not the performance It not their version of I Android 10
4:41
It's all about the cameras. And it just turns out they're not really very good. So instead of just talking about it, though, let's walk through some examples. So first off, I took this same
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photograph in wide angle, normal, and zoomed in. And look at that zoomed in shot. That's really
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kind of weird. This is just the digital zoom on the camera. And it looks like it became a pen and ink
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drawing. It's really strange. My impression is that the pixels just couldn't collect enough data
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to actually have a crisp rendering. Kind of strange. And then here I talked about that 64 megapixel
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AI quad camera. So here it is in extra large render mode. So this is a 9280 by 6944 pixel shot
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And I'm going to zoom in so you can see that it really does collect a lot of data. This particular
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photo is 22 megabytes. Then there's macro mode, which I wasn't too impressed with. As you can see
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here, I really want macro to be really tight and crisp and let me get really, really close
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And this didn't quite pull that off. And then night mode, well, I tried night mode by default
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It used the flash. Here's what that photo looked like. But then when I disabled the flash and just held the camera steady
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I got actually a better and more interesting picture, though the color, you know, are like way out of whack
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It is way weirdly warm and orange yellow. But maybe that's just a low light image
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So the real issue here was the video. So let's look at this video
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and it's very pleasant. But when we zoom in on the phone to actually get tighter resolution or, you know, to sort of
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zoom in on that detail, look at the poor image information. It just not very crisp And fundamentally that the issue that I have with this phone is that there so much to like They got all the specs right but they even have something super unusual which is that the camera lenses don stick out
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Great. But I think they went too far down that road, and they ended up with a poor camera
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And it just doesn't take very good pictures, or does it capture very good video
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And that's a problem, because however much you're paying for your smartphone nowadays
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people expect really good cameras. I mean, why not, right? So that was a real disappointment on an otherwise
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really nice phone with a really good hand feel and a gorgeous screen and some really nice specs
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But because of the camera, I'm going to suggest you check out the TCL 11 or whatever it is
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the next phone they're going to come out with. And hopefully between now and then, they're going to take
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this strip of cameras and entirely replace it with a new set. So once they can be
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up that camera. This is going to be a killer phones. A really nice addition. But right now
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I'm going to give you a hold recommendation rather than a buy recommendation. So, only thing
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left to talk about is the price. But before we get to the price, I'm going to ask if you can
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subscribe to my channel. Really appreciate when you do that. Great. Now, TCL 10 Pro 449
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at TCL USA.com. You can go check it out. You can see what other people have said about it
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You can watch other videos, read other reviews, see what you think
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Some people really like it and didn't have an issue with the camera. Not sure what their experiences were and how they were different to mine
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but different people see different things in a device. For me, this is not going to go on my top 10 list for 2020
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but who knows, maybe the next version will be a absolutely knock out of the park
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as we say in American baseball. And with that, I'll catch you in my next video
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