A few thoughts on TCL Nxtpaper 70 Pro and TMobile

Ordered the phone last week from TM - $229 + shipping ($6 IIRC)

Delivered Saturday.

Stuck the TM SIM in (from my old phone). Started charging it. Setup was a little confusing - instructions not that clear. After some resets and a few other machinations, eventually phone calls and texting was working. Not something I would have given to someone from my parent’s generation (pre-Boomer Silent gen) and expected them to have it working without help (my mom was somewhat computer literate).

After the phone was charged, I switched back and forth between max battery saving and std mode - mostly the former. Seemed to use about 1%/per hour - and most of the time it wasn’t being used. For a 5.2 AH battery, and the “e-ink” display, not impressed - had hoped for better battery use efficiency. I got about or better that with my old phone (Samsung S9 Note w/4AH and it was an old well used phone).

I charged the battery fully again yesterday and so far it seems to be doing better - but it less than a day of use. I have not used airplane mode yet.

One thing I noticed is that although I have it set to automatically use WiFi calling, when I set it down (or in my pocket), and then pick it back up, it seems to lose connection to my router and goes to cellular only. Sometimes it will then reconnect, but most of the time I have to go into settings and mess around with telling it to use WiFi. I live very rural, and while it seems to get a strong cell signal, it is usually better to use WiFi (even though my WiFi is TM 5G Home Internet, so it is hitting a cell tower too). My old phone had no issues like this.

Switching between display modes is confusing - in one mode, if I restart the phone (for updates, which it is still getting), I can’t login in that mode as when I swipe up to get the numeric pad it only shows a tiny locked icon at the top and not the pad - but it is there because if I tap the screen a number appears momentarily.

I can only see the pad if I used the display mode button to switch modes. Confusing for anyone - I could see this causing the phone to be returned or requiring a lot of tech support (I have not hit TCL’s support yet).

The display is nice, but not as good in direct sunlight as I expected - just not as bad as a regular display. There seems to be more modes than I expected - so the jury is out. Right now I am running “super power saving mode” which sets the display to dark and I assume a variation of the “e-ink” mode.

For a phone with two speakers (or it is supposed to have two), the sound level is not as much as I would like - just a little bit better than my old phone.

I got a notice (email IIRC) that the phone is locked until some future date (6 months? 1 year? I forget) or I spend $100 at TM. No big deal - at $17+/mo (I am on a prepaid plan) that should pass in 6 months. I just think they should say that upfront before I purchased the phone (maybe it was inside one of their many pages of disclosure text?).