TCL’s New Phone Is What You Want if You Stare Too Long at Screens

TCL, the company whose bread and butter is putting giant TVs in living rooms for relatively cheap, seems to understand many of us are tired of looking at screens. The company’s new phone promises to offer all the peak features mobile buyers expect with a display that can become an e-reader with the flip of a switch. And before you ask—no, sorry—you can’t buy it in the U.S.

Announced at IFA 2025, the NXTPaper 60 Ultra is the sequel to last year’s budget 50 NXTPaper phone. The phone’s main raison d’être is the switch that eliminates all color on the screen and turns the device into a pseudo e-reader. The “Max Ink Mode” limits which apps you can use down to the few reading apps on your device. Changing the mode includes a small animation where the color literally bleeds from the page, helping you slip into a hardcore reading mode flow state. It’s an easy switch you can use to cut out notifications and focus in on what you’re reading.

The updated NXTPaper 60 Ultra phone has a larger 7.2-inch display built with the new NXTPaper 4 technology that the company introduced back at CES 2025. This is a kind of matte display tech that TCL claims has a paper-like texture and reduces blue light; the light is supposed to be closer to natural illumination than what you normally get from a screen. The new display type is supposed to offer “zero flicker,” which implies there won’t be the frame rate fluctuations prone to other OLED or LCD screens, which can be hard on people’s eyes. The NXTPaper 60 Ultra will also work with TCL’s own T-Pen stylus.

Other than the screen, the big upgrade is the addition of a 50-megapixel main camera, alongside a 50-megapixel periscope telephoto. TCL also promises users will have the MuseFilm filter on their photos to recreate some film-like qualities. It likely won’t be nearly as good as Fujifilm’s film simulation “recipes”, but it’s something unique beyond the average iPhone’s “Noir” and “Dramatic” filters.

The NXTPaper 60 Ultra will cost 449 euros, equivalent to around $524. The kicker is you can’t buy the device in the U.S. Once again, buyers in North America are stuck with all the usual suspects: Samsung, Google, Apple, plus the odd OnePlus device. Perhaps one day I’ll have the chance to buy a weird pseudo-e-paper phone or a crazy foldable without acquiring a device from overseas. Until then, I’ll keep staring at my blue light-emitting devices until my eyes fall out of my sockets.