TCL NXTPAPER 70 Pro: The E-Ink Phone That Wants to Replace Your Tablet
TCL’s 7-inch E-Ink hybrid promises three-week battery life and 5G calling for €399, aiming at note-takers and bedtime readers tired of blue-light glare.
How a single slab of matte glass is rewriting the rules of reading
BARCELONA—On the eve of Mobile World Congress, TCL quietly slid a curious device onto a café table and asked a handful of journalists to treat it like any other phone. Within minutes, the room fell silent. The NXTPAPER 70 Pro, a 7-inch E-Ink slate that doubles as a smartphone, had done what most gadgets no longer manage: it startled people into silence.
The moment the lights dimmed
"We turned off the overhead LEDs and the screen didn't flinch," recalls tech YouTuber Lina Cho, who live-streamed her first impressions. "No glare, no flicker—just paper. My chat exploded."
People kept asking if we had slipped a Kindle inside a phone case. The answer is simpler: we built the Kindle into the phone. —Li Zhang, TCL NXTPAPER product lead
Specs that sound like contradictions
- 7″ NXTPAPER 3.0 display, 1404 × 1872, matte finish
- Dual-mode refresh: 60 Hz color / 120 Hz monochrome
- Mediatek Dimensity 7050, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB storage
- 5G, dual SIM, microSD slot
- 5,000 mAh battery rated for "three weeks of reading"
- Android 14, TCL UI 6.0, stylus support
A tablet that slips into a jacket pocket
At 7.8 mm thin and 225 g, the NXTPAPER 70 Pro is lighter than an iPad mini yet packs a display the size of a paperback page. TCL's engineers achieved the trick by laminating the E-Ink layer directly to the Gorilla Glass, eliminating the air gap that usually makes e-paper feel sluggish.
The price that turns heads
The device ships in Europe first, priced at €399. Analysts note that undercuts the reMarkable 2 tablet-plus-marker bundle by €50 while adding 5G calling. Pre-orders open March 4; global rollout expected by late April.
Early verdict: niche, but magnetic
"It's not for TikTok doom-scrolling," warns Cho, "but for annotating PDFs on the metro, it's sorcery." TCL claims 72 % of beta testers abandoned their primary tablet within two weeks.
Whether the world needs an E-Ink phone remains uncertain. What is clear: after years of glass slabs racing toward ever-brighter OLEDs, TCL just bet on the quiet charm of paper—and people are listening.