If you own an Amazon Kindle but would prefer not to have to carry it around as well as your smartphone, a new gadget has just been announced that could be up your street. Unveiled today at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, the TCL NXTPAPER 70 Pro is an affordable Android smartphone with a very clever trick that lets you change the display from full colour to one that looks like an e-reader’s.
TCL has developed a special display technology, also used on tablets and other smartphones, called NXTPAPER. According to TCL this “advanced hardware and software to deliver a clear, comfortable, paper-like, full-color display, day or night.”
It means the new NXTPAPER 70 Pro has a matte, paperlike finish even when displaying colour. But this means it can run full Android via a colour LCD display just like any other Android smartphone, with a dedicated button on the side that when pressed lets you switch between different screen modes (Color Paper Mode, Ink Paper Mode, and Max Ink Mode) depending on what you want to do.
TCL said these modes deliver “a paper-like viewing experience alongside the classic clarity of a color interface as well as a black-and-white interface.”
You can therefore use the phone to run full colour Android apps like you would on a Samsung Galaxy or Google Pixel phone, but when you fire up an e-book on the Kindle or Kobo app, you can switch to paper-like display to the monochrome Max Ink Mode, which TCL says uses so little power the phone could last for seven days of reading or up to 26 days in standby.
Not only that, the phone uses blue light purification tech that TCL says reduces blue light and eases eye strain. This is one of the key selling points for dedicated e-reader devices, but the NXTPAPER 70 Pro claims to offer all the benefits in a do-all smartphone.
On the hardware side of things, the phone has a 6.9-inch screen, MediaTek Dimensity 7300 chipset, 8GB RAM with either 256GB or 512GB storage, IP68 dust and water resistance and a 5,200mAh battery. It’s also compatible with an optional stylus that can be used as an input device or to take handwritten notes or sketch in compatible apps.
The phone will be available to buy on Amazon from February, with an exact release date still to be confirmed. The 256GB model will cost £269, while the 512GB will set you back £319. These are very reasonable prices if you like the idea of having a Kindle-like device that’s also a phone.
Regular screen smartphones have the Kindle app, but emit punishing blue light, while E Ink smartphone size devices such as the Boox Palma 2 Pro definitely have several shortcomings. TCL’s NXTPAPER 70 Pro is a niche device certainly, but it could well be your niche.
