The day bargain hunters have been waiting for since early January is finally here right around the corner, with T-Mobile’s ultra-affordable TCL 30 XE 5G officially scheduled for a commercial debut this Friday, February 25, at both the “Un-carrier” itself and prepaid subsidiary Metro by T-Mobile.
Intriguingly, Magenta will charge slightly less than its daughter operator, at $198 compared to $199.99, thus allowing the brand-new 6.5-inch mid-ranger to undercut the 6.8-inch T-Mobile REVVL V+ 5G (by the same trivial two bucks) and technically claim the title of the cheapest 5G-enabled phone available on the nation’s second-largest wireless service provider.
To be perfectly clear, the screen resolution is not impressive by any standard, at 1600 x 720 pixels, and the same goes for the outdated V-shaped notch and relatively wide “chin” making this thing’s design pretty hard to swallow for all but T-Mo’s least demanding customers.
On the decidedly bright side of things, the TCL 30 XE 5G packs a hefty 4,500mAh battery with support for reasonably fast 18W charging, and the MediaTek Dimensity 700 processor doesn’t sound like a pushover either, powering considerably costlier devices from various other brands outside of the US.
Give it a few weeks and you could well score T-Mo’s most affordable 5G smartphone completely free of charge, at least with a new line of service and/or a number port-in.