The TCL 50 Pro NXTPAPER is a smartphone with a low price, a svelte screen and a sinister side

You probably haven’t heard of TCL, a Chinese company that hails from Huizhou, Guangdong province, and is the world’s second-largest manufacturer of television sets. It also makes washing machines and mobile phones, among other things, and has ambitions to create content too; the latter is exemplified by TCL’s ownership of the naming rights to the famous Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, or the TCL Chinese Theatre as it is now known.

This is the company’s new TCL 50 Pro NXTPAPER, a mobile with a difference thanks to its hybrid screen. Despite its very affordable price, the 50 Pro has a large 6.8-inch FHD+ display, a decent 32MP front camera and 108MP rear camera, and 512GB of internal storage. The cover isn’t made from conventional metal, glass or plastic, but a carbon-neutral fibre basalt material, available in Moon Grey and Midnight Blue.

The phone’s party trick is its adaptive screen, equipped with a matt coating to minimise blue light and glare. This not only helps viewing the screen in direct sunlight, thanks to automatic control of colour temperature, but also reduces eye strain in the evening. That’s paired with ‘Max Ink Mode’, which swaps the conventional display for e-ink and is activated by a physical switch on the side of the unit. This makes it perfect for reading or note taking (with the optional T-Pen), with the added bonus (or not) of halting apps and notifications.

The 50 Pro effectively transforms into an e-reader like a Kindle, it also gets e-reader-style battery life, with up to seven days of reading and no less than 26 days on standby. In practice you’ll be switching between modes if you’re using the 50 Pro as a conventional phone in the interim.

Moving over to a new phone is never easy even though Apple and its Android counterparts try and make it as easy as possible for newcomers to swap between the building blocks of their digital lives. iPhone users can stop reading now, providing they’re happy with Apple’s (lovingly tended and well-perfumed) walled garden.

Android, on the other hand, is more complex. These days, flipping between the various Android providers requires a whole new set of muscle memories. The basics remain the same, but individual apps, icons, and gestures can all be completely different from one brand to another. TCL is no different. Although the NXTPAPER 3.0 tech at least offers something different in the form of the multi-functional display, you’re still going to have to relearn some basics.

It's certainly impressive to find so much functionality at such a price point, and the 50 Pro would make an excellent second device for travelling, combining holiday reading with snapshots and light social media use. However, we’d caution against going all-in to the TCL experience. The phone’s ‘cutting-edge AI functionalities’ include text and writing ‘Assistants’, ostensibly to ‘boost user productivity seamlessly’, and as such are similar in scope to offerings from Apple Intelligence, Google Gemini et al.

TCL wants to go further. Under the auspices of its newly announced TCL Film Machine platform, the company has taken the unprecedented step of launching five short AI-generated (or substantially AI-generated) films. The stated intention, according to PR Newswire, is ‘to build new pathways for creatives to find success in the industry and help shape the future of storytelling’.

These films are portents of a dark future – they’re available to watch in full on YouTube – the starting gun in a race to the bottom of the content barrel that no amount of human stewardship and oversight can halt or divert. This 404 Media story on the films’ premiere (at the TCL Chinese Theatre, no less) gives you some idea of what to expect, and how TCL wants to pipe this kind of content into its televisions to capture the least discerning demographic and their associated advertising spend.

So, caution. Is this a credible or desirable future, where the dead hand of AI generates media that in turn subsidises cheap, cheap technology? Generative AI becomes increasingly sophisticated with each passing month, but just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. TCL might offer an affordable eco-system, but it’s one where the Ts and Cs are stacked against true human creativity.

TCL 50 Pro NXTPAPER 5G, c£299, TCL.com, Amazon.co.uk