World enews: TCL’s 30 Series adds five new budget handsets in Europe starting at €139

TCL, the Chinese manufacturer best known for its lineup of smart TVs, has announced five new affordable Android smartphones as part of its 30 Series. Unlike the TCL 30 XE 5G and TCL 30 V 5G announced earlier this year for the US market, the five new handsets are focused on Europe, and their starting prices range from €139 to €249.

At the top of the new lineup is the TCL 30 5G, the only one of the new phones to support 5G. It’s got a 6.7-inch 1080p OLED display with a 13-megapixel selfie camera in a small teardrop notch, and around back it has a trio of cameras including a 50-megapixel main camera, a 2-megapixel depth sensor, and a 2-megapixel macro camera. It’s powered by a MediaTek Dimensity 700 chipset with a 5,010mAh battery, and will be priced starting at €249 when it goes on sale in Europe in April.

The TCL 30 5G sits at the top of the lineup.

Image: TCL

Next up are the €199 TCL 30 Plus and €179 TCL 30. Both have the same 6.7-inch display and triple camera setup as the TCL 30 5G, but as their names suggest, they’re not 5G capable. The TCL 30 specifically also has a lower-resolution 8-megapixel selfie camera. Both are powered by a MediaTek Helio G37 processor, with 5,010mAh batteries, and are available now in Europe.

At the bottom of the lineup are the €149 TCL 30 SE and €139 TCL 30 E. They have smaller and lower-resolution 6.52-inch 720p displays, less powerful Helio G25 processors, and the TCL 30 E also lacks the 2-megapixel macro camera found on the rest of the lineup. But even these lower-cost handsets still include 5,000mAh batteries, use USB-C rather than older Micro USB connections, and, like the rest of the lineup, will ship with Android 12. The 30 SE is available now, while the 30 E will ship in Europe in April.

When TCL announced its first two 30 Series handsets in January, it said that it planned to launch a total of eight phones around the world over the course of 2022. With today’s announcement, seven of these eight phones are now public, with only a successor to last year’s TCL 20 Pro unaccounted for.