TCL NXTPAPER 60 Ultra - The Best Smartphone Of Both Worlds!
Do you value your eyesight? Do you appreciate ultra battery life and good cameras? And do you want a phone that delivers this without compromising on all the other important features on a phone? Well, there’s a lot of ultra phones out there, but none are quite like this — the NXTpaper 60 Ultra from TCL. This ultra has 106 patents, 10 international certifications, and tons of media awards.
Unlike other ultra phones, this one comes in at around £500 — that’s about half the cost of a flagship phone these days. And this phone has some very unique display technology that you might not have seen before. So, let’s run through the design first, the important need-to-know specs, and then we’ll get into those ultra tech innovations.
Design
The NXTpaper 60 Ultra is a large phone. It’s got a full metal body and a matte black back. The volume buttons are located on the right side, and there's a 2-in-1 fingerprint scanner and power button also. Just below it is the switch that unlocks this phone's superpower. The camera module design is very interesting. It’s got this reflective finish on the camera module, which definitely looks unique. And it’s got some serious firepower behind those lenses, which we’ll come back to.
The NXTpaper 60 Ultra is a slim phone. It's just 7.57mm thin, and it’s tall. Up top, it’s got an IR blaster for controlling almost any infrared device. It has dual speakers, a dual SIM tray, and it’s sealed up to meet IP68 dust and water resistance standards. And it does have built-in magnets for magnetic accessories, including TCL’s own Mag Flip and T-Pen, which snap onto the device and transform it into a kind of futuristic notepad and pen.
Battery
The built-in battery is a large 5200mAh, and it can recharge at speeds up to 33W. It also supports Qi wireless charging and can reverse wireless charge devices at speeds up to 10 watts. Now, this battery size and charging speed sound kind of standard, but it’s how this phone works that takes normal battery life and turns it into incredible battery life — you’ll see what I mean.
Processing
When it comes to regular day-to-day use of this phone, it performs exactly like any other Android device. You have access to all the same apps. Out of the box, it’s running on Android 15, and it’s powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 7400, which is a well-balanced mid-range chip. It’s more than capable of handling social media and day-to-day apps, and it can handle light gaming.
TCL has thrown in 12GB RAM to help with multitasking and load speeds, and this can actually be doubled using the RAM expansion feature. This involves sacrificing some of the onboard storage, which can be either 256GB or 512GB.
Camera
When it comes to cameras, this NXTpaper is honestly impressive at this price point. The main camera uses a large 50MP sensor and it does have OIS. The performance is good — here are a few shots to give you an idea of the quality you could expect. You can also shoot up to 4K 30fps on the main camera. TCL has also equipped it with a 50MP periscope which can zoom up to 100x and also has OIS. This is certainly a nice-to-have camera.
Up until recently, this kind of zoom range was something you’d only get on very expensive phones. There’s also an 8MP ultrawide for those group photos. It’s not bad — it gets the job done when you need it, but it’s no match for the other two cameras on this device. The selfie camera is also pretty awesome. It uses a 32MP sensor, and it performs well — but I’ll let you be the judge of that.
Display
Ok, now let me show you what makes this phone so unique. It has a huge 7.2” FHD+ 120Hz AMOLED display, which is something a lot of phones have. But it’s how TCL has modified the glass with NXTpaper 4.0 tech that changes everything. They’ve coated it in an anti-reflective layer and used nano-matrix lithography technology, which is essentially nano patterns etched into the glass. This significantly reduces glare and reflections to a minimum. It’s the best that I’ve seen to date when it comes to this.
It also solves the fingerprint issue — again, the best I’ve seen at doing this. And at the same time, it improves viewing angles and reduces harmful blue light. Here’s something you won’t notice right away but that will help your eye health without you even knowing: the TCL NXTpaper 60 Ultra’s display uses Zero Flicker tech, which means your eyes won’t get fatigued due to rapidly changing light. At night, the display can reduce down to just 2 nits of brightness, making it visible but incredibly gentle on your eyes. It’s also a circular polarised display, which comes into play in bright light conditions and allows the display to stay visible even when wearing polarised sunglasses.
Killer Features
And what I appreciate the most about this phone is this — that switch on the side. This is the NXTpaper Key, and it allows you to instantly switch between the Max Ink Mode, which turns the NXTpaper 60 Ultra into maybe the most capable e-reader that you can get right now. It’s these modes that take that 5200mAh battery and make it last anywhere between 7 and 26 days on a single charge. In this mode, the phone’s surface looks just like paper, and if you get the T-Pen to go with it, that textured surface adds enough resistance to make it feel like paper too. And it's a very good stylus. The latency is ultra-low, and the display can recognise 4096 levels of pressure from it. If you ever want it to be a little more colourful, you can switch it to Colour Paper Mode, which brings back some of the colours to the screen while still keeping that stripped-back e-reader look.
The great thing about Colour Paper Mode is that you can pick and choose which apps can pass through. You can even run full Android apps whilst in this mode if you want to — so you can think of this as a kind of ultra-focus mode. And of course, you’ve got the full regular mode where your phone operates exactly like a regular Android 15 device. Because it is a fully-fledged Android, it gives you a lot of options when it comes to AI. For example, you can have ebooks read out like an audiobook. It can also do this in a podcast format, which feels more like a discussion about what you’re reading. It can help you summarise and simplify complex topics. There are also lots of other AI productivity tools available, like AI voice recordings, translations, and writing tools.
Final Thoughts
This is honestly a really well-rounded device. In my opinion, it’s well-suited to anyone who spends a lot of time reading and working on a phone.
