TUDIA DualShield Designed for TCL 10 Pro Case, [Merge] Heavy Duty Protection Slim Hard Shell Phone Case for TCL 10 Pro (Matte Black)

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I'm generally a fan of muted colors, so I've been leaving NXTVISION off most of the time, but it makes a hugely noticeable difference. What makes this particular comparison worse is that you’re seeing an example of the kinds of photos the TCL 10 Pro delivers when its AI scene detection engine is off. When that feature is on, the colors are even more ridiculous, with a degree of eye-searing oversaturation I’ve rarely seen from a smartphone camera, even at this low price. These photos were taken on a sunny day, and the flower is naturally vibrant; it definitely didn’t need any post processing to enhance those colors, and yet, TCL’s software went that far anyway. Benchmark testing shows the 10 Pro can handle a heavy load without issue. On PCMark Work 2.0, a series of tests that emulate everyday smartphone tasks, the phone scored 7,311, about the same as you’ll find on the Google Pixel 3a (7,378) and much better than the Samsung Galaxy A51 (5,429).

The company claims a really good battery life but not really. I am a driver and listen to Spotify a lot and audio books on YouTube. Although I can get 6 hours of that easily enough, it's pretty low by the time I get home. And that's if I take breaks here and there from the phone. That was a little misleading but could just be a personal issue with the phone. The TCL 10 Pro also supports 18W fast charging, which it claims can get you from 0 to 50% in 35 minutes. In our own day to day usage, we observed that half an hour of charging with the battery at 27% yielded a 37% gain. Photos captured with the 10 Pro’s 64-MP main lens incorporate quad-pixel binning to allow more light to reach the sensor, so the result is 12-MP regardless. That equals the iPhone SE’s resolution, and thus, this pair of shots of a mandevilla flower from both phones are similarly sharp. However, there’s a massive gap in color and detail; the hues on the TCL phone are boosted into the stratosphere, such that the texture of the petals and leaves are totally absent. Imperfections that are noticeable on the iPhone SE’s take are curiously absent in the 10 Pros’ rendition, as they’ve been smoothed over with excessive blur. But night mode is still quite an advanced feature, and it works here at a basic level. What we’re really disappointed about with the TCL 10 Pro’s camera is how inconsistent and glitchy it seems to be in regular conditions. Let’s set aside the annoying watermark that finds its way onto your shots by default, as this can at least be turned off in the Settings menu.We’re glad there’s the option, and indeed this is quite a customizable UI in general. But not everyone will go delving into these deeper menus. The default software offering should be better. Battery life In addition, general image processing isn’t nearly as good as that of Google, Xiaomi or Huawei phones at the price. Fine textures sometimes end up looking “painted”, turning gravel into brush strokes, and fine detail is over-sharpened.

The TCL 10 Pro’s 2340 x 1080 pixel OLED screen is a highlight. While it may not be quite up to the standards of the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra’s display, it has all of the same basic hallmarks. Although I do wish I could get a different phone it is only because of the curved screen interfering with texting and the sensitivity of the touch not being sensitive enough. Unfortunately, neither fingerprint sensor is particularly great. The in-display sensor on the 10 Pro is located frustratingly low down the display, making it hard to reach with your thumb, and both sensors are slow.

The TCL 10 Pro isn’t just a good first effort — it’s a great $450 phone

Our main camera has a 64-megapixel Samsung S5KGW1 sensor, a large 1/1.72-inch 64-megapixel chip. It’s used across a bunch of Xiaomi phones including the Remi Note 9 Pro, but only one Samsung line to my knowledge – the Galaxy A71. Despite being rich in megapixels, Samsung doesn’t use it in its top-end phones. There’s also a little shutter lag to the TCL 10 Pro camera. It’s only around a third of a second, but this is noticeable when comparing directly to phones from some of the better-known names. Close-up indoor food pictures with reasonable natural lighting look quite appetizing at first glance, but there was a tendency to pump up the reds and greens to an unnatural degree. On a couple of occasions the AI algorithm couldn’t make its mind up whether it was taking a food shot at all, and kept flipping between two modes, revealing an unwitting flip-book illustration of the unnaturalness of this effect.

Another fresh hardware inclusion is an additional hardware button on the left hand edge, which will bring up Google Assistant. This could be handy if you don’t fancy barking ‘Hey Google’ , or don't want to accidentally wake up your Google Home.

You definitely aren't buying the TCL 10 Series phones for their cameras. If photography is your main priority (or really any priority) and you're looking to spend as little as possible, the Pixel 3a will take you far further for your money — and of course, we're also expecting its sequel, the Pixel 4a, to be announced some time soon. But the TCL 10 Pro has a far more premium design than Google's budget range, with matte glass that feels just as great as it looks, and the Smart Key is a genuinely useful and convenient feature. And the Xiaomi Ni Note 10? Unsurprisingly, it’s far ahead with 8513 points. These scores are abstractions, but provide a relative idea of the phones’ real battery life. The TCL 10 Pro’s should be at least a little better considering its 4500mAh capacity. Its exposure metering leans slightly too much towards making your images bright and vivid. As a result, there are often small areas of overexposure even after the dynamic range processing has done its thing.

It was only following two weeks with the device that I discovered an issue with the TCL 10 Pro design. The rear finish is too easy to scratch, and the phone doesn’t come with a case or a screen protector. Video capture tops out at 4K resolution, 30 frames a second. And, unusually, there are no 60fps capture modes, even at 1080p or below. Macro photos are passable, with greater close-up detail than you’d see from the main camera. However, the macro isn’t good enough to make me want to actually use it regularly. Portrait depth images aren’t great, either. Too often you’ll see images that look unnatural thanks to dodgy depth mapping. The 10 Pro has a 4,500mAh battery that should easily get you through a full day. In our battery drain test, which streams HD video over Wi-Fi at full brightness, the phone lasted 11 hours and 29 minutes. With more conservative use, you should be able to get a few more hours of screen time. It might not be fair for me to only rate it 3 stars because everyone is different. But as pissingly annoying as this is I personally cannot recommend four stars but I think others would.On Standard mode, the TCL 10 Pro covered 172.3% of the sRGB color space. That translates to noticeably more vibrant colors than the 111.2% iPhone SE, which utilizes an LCD panel. However, the iPhone’s hues were more realistic, as Apple’s phone notched a Delta-E score of 0.20 compared to the TCL’s 0.28 (numbers closer to zero are better). This is no great surprise when companies such as Huawei and Samsung have made far more high-end phones. The development has justified spending big on optimising depth-mapping algorithms, for example.