TCL Technology is a Chinese multinational electronics company that designs, develops, manufactures, and sells products the most commonly known brand for television sets in the Philippines. The TCL Plex is their initial step at competing in the smartphone market with a good start showcasing a 6.53-inch display, Snapdragon 675, and a triple rear camera system.
The TCL Plex: A mid-range smartphone device with great display
The Plex has a pretty nice glass back and front held together by a metallic frame. A punch-hole selfie camera is placed at the upper left corner, and at the back, a triple-camera setup, stacked and placed on the top center. It has a dual-LED flash split before and after the three camera sensors. The fingerprint scanner is set below the horizontal camera system, below, maintaining its symmetrical aesthetics.
It fashions a 3.5mm headphone jack and a noise-canceling microphone at the top for the loudspeaker. On the parallel side, at the bottom, the primary microphone, single-firing loudspeaker, and the USB Type-C charging port are in place.
On the left side is where you can find the Hybrid Dual SIM card tray and the programmable button for users to quickly access the apps, toggle the flashlight, and initiate Google Assistant. The volume rocker and the power button are placed on the right.
The TCL Plex features a 6.53-inch FHD+ IPS LCD panel with a resolution of 2340 x 1080 (395ppi). It gets an Android 9 Pie OS with TCL UI skin on top. Its interface includes app with some pre-installed TCL apps like the Smart Key –one that allows users to customize the programmable button on the left.
A triple-camera system composed of a 48MP primary shooter F1.8, a 16MP ultrawide F2.4, and a 2MP lowlight sensor F1.8. And in the punch-hole at the front, resides a 24MP F2.0 selfie camera. The Plex can shoot up to 4K resolution video and has a 960 fps slow-mo mode.
It sports a Qualcomm Snapdragon 675 coupled with an Adreno 612 GPU. The TCL Plex gets 6GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage with expandable storage of up to 256GB via microSD.
The device gets fingerprint and face unlock biometric scanners. The fingerprint scanner is rear-mounted, while the face unlock system is optical-operated.
The TCL Plex has dual-SIM, 4G LTE, dual-band WiFi, Bluetooth 5.0, NFC, support for multiple SatNavs, 3.5mm audio port, and USB Type-C. It gets a moderate 3,820mAh battery capacity that supports Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 3. A full charge will take an hour and 45 minutes.
TCL Plex Specifications
| Colors | Opal White Obsidian Black |
| Dimensions | 162.2 x 76.56 x ~7.99mm |
| Weight | 192g |
| OS | TCL UI Android™ Pie |
| Processor | Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 675, Octa-Core (Qualcomm Kryo™ 460 2 x Gold 2.0GHz, 6 x Silver 1.7GHz) |
| Display | 6.53-inch FHD+ Dotch display 19.5:9 display (1080 x 2340 pixels) FHD+ resolution Pixelworks Visual Processor Screen-to-body ratio: 90% 395ppi |
| Triple rear camera | Resolution: 48MP + 16MP + 2MP Auto focus Dual single-tone LED flash Aperture: F1.8 + F2.4 + F1.8 Image sensor: IMX582 + S5K3P9 + OV02K Sensor size: 1/2.0” + 1/3” + 1/2.8″ Pixel size: 0.8μm + 1.0μm + 2.9μm Lens field of view: 79˚ + 123˚ + 77˚ Video capture: 4K video@30FPS, 1080P@120FPS, 720P@240FPS, super slow-motion 720P@960FPS Features: Anti-blur, anti-shaking, auto zoom, burst shot, dark shot, depth bokeh, Google Lens, gyro-assisted video stabilization, low-light video, night mode, panorama, pro mode, photo filters, scene detection, Super Night mode, super resolution, super slow-motion, time-lapse, wide-angle distortion correction |
| Front camera | Resolution: 24MP, 5P lens Fixed focus LCD Flash Aperture: F2.0 Image sensor: OV24B Sensor size: 1/2.8″ Pixel size: 0.9µm Lens field of view: 78.2˚ Video capture: 1080P@30FPS, 720P@30FPS, 480P@30FPS Features: Bokeh, Face Beautification, photo filters |
| Memory | 6GB RAM + 128GB ROM Supports MicroSD card up to 256GB User memory: 109GB |
| Battery & Performance | Battery: 3820mAh Quick Charge 3.0 Talk time: 12 hours (2G), 25 hours (3G), 16.5 hours (4G) typical use Standby time: 396 hours typical use Charging time: 1 hour 45 minutes |
| Audio | Audio formats: AAC+, enhanced AAC+, AAC LC, AMR-NB, AMR-WB, FLAC, MP3, MIDI, Vorbis, PCM/WAVE HD Voice FM radio Multi-mic microphones Dual-mic noise cancellation 3.5mm audio jack Supported headsets: LRGM and LRMG |
| Connectivity | 4G Cat 6: 400Mbit/s downlink, 75Mbit/s uplink Wi-Fi: 802.11 b/g/n for 2.4GHz, 802.11 a/n/ac for 5GHz, Wi-Fi Direct, Wi-Fi display, 4G Mobile Hotspot, GPS with A-GPS, VoLTE, VoWifi (optional) Bluetooth 5.0 USB: Type-C USB 2.0 NFC SIM card: Nano SIM (4FF) + 1 TF card Single SIM model: 1 4FF Nano SIM + Micro SD Dual SIM model: 1 4FF Nano SIM + 1 4FF Nano SIM or Micro SD |
| Sensors | Accelerometer & gyro sensor, A-GPS, e-compass, GPS, proximity sensor, RGB light sensors |
| Authentication | Face Key, fingerprint sensor |
| Other features | Google Assistant, flashlight |
| Accesories | Protective case, film display protector |
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The TCL Plex retails for ₱18,990 for the 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage model. It is available on Lazada Philippines in two color variants: Opal White and Obsidian Black.
