Aside from Samsung, the only other prominent companies to launch stylus phones were LG and Motorola. LG’s no longer making phones, but Motorola is seeing some success with its Moto G Stylus series.
TCL wants a piece of that pie with the TCL Stylus 5G
The name isn’t really all that unique, but it tells the story. This phone, according to Engadget, is a budget-orientated smartphone that leverages its built-in stylus to interact with the phone in more ways. Much like the Galaxy Note (now S Ultra) phones, the TCL Stylus’ pen will come with some additional functionality. This includes preloaded apps that will let you take notes, draw, and make certain content. These will seem derivative to what Samsung offers; then again, how much unique functionality can you squeeze into a stylus? For example, there’s a feature that will let you take the pen out while the phone’s screen is off and write on it without unlocking the phone. Also, there’s a feature that will let you create GIFs. These are all things that we’ve seen with past Galaxy Note devices, and they made their way over to LG’s Stylo series.
What about the other specs?
Aside from the included pen, the TCL Stylus 5G has some typical budget phone specs that will get you through the day. This phone has the MediaTek Dimensity 700 SoC, and that’s backed up by 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. As for the display, it has a large 6.8-inch display with an FHD+ resolution. You wouldn’t expect great visuals from this display, but it does have the benefit of NXTVISION. Basically, the technology can take SDR video and upscale it to HDR. That’s a neat feature to have on such an inexpensive phone. As for the camera, this phone has a quad-camera setup; however, only three are meant for taking pictures. It has a 50MP main camera, and that’s accompanied by a 5MP ultrawide camera, a 2MP macro camera, and a 2MP depth sensor. The selfie camera is a 13MP camera. Rounding out the specs, this phone has a 4,000mAh battery, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and microSD card expansion. TCL promises that this phone will get one major platform update and two years of security patches. If you want to pick up this phone, you can get it for $258 at T-Mobile or Metro.
