TCL Sells Matte Phones Next to a 10,000-Nit TV

TCL used IFA 2026 in Berlin to put a matte AMOLED phone on sale beside a 10,000-nit Mini LED TV it first showed in January. The P80 Ultra and P80 Pro started their European rollout on September 11, while US carrier and retail dates for the phones remain unannounced.

The hall in Messe Berlin was selling two answers to the same problem. One is a living-room panel pushed to the HDR brightness ceiling. The other is a phone screen built so you do not have to squint at a glossy slab in daylight.

The 10,000-Nit Flagship First Showed Up in January

TCL introduced the X11L SQD-Mini LED series on January 5, 2026, at CES in Las Vegas, in 75-, 85-, and 98-inch sizes. IFA’s job was to park that flagship in Hall 21A from September 4 to 8 and talk about it next to phones and tablets that actually debuted in Berlin.

Chris Hamdorf, executive vice president of TCL North America, framed the set as the end of a long argument between OLED blacks and LED punch.

The industry has spent years debating which compromise is better: OLED’s darkness or LED’s brightness. The X11L ends that debate by harnessing 20,000 dimming zones and 10,000 peak nits to deliver both simultaneously.

Chris Hamdorf, EVP, TCL North America, CES 2026 launch

IFA materials put the 98-inch panel at up to 20,736 dimming zones and still claim 10,000 peak nits of brightness, which TCL calls the maximum for HDR rendering. The CSOT WHVA 2.0 Ultra panel is rated at 7,000:1 static contrast, with an anti-reflective layer, a ZeroBorder edge, and 100% BT.2020 color through Super Quantum Dots and a CSOT UltraColor Filter. The cabinet is 0.8 inches deep, with Audio by Bang & Olufsen built in and a native 144Hz panel.

X11L ON THE CARD

• Sizes: 75, 85, and 98 inches, with Google TV and Gemini.
• Light control: Up to 20,736 dimming zones on the 98-inch set.
• Claimed peak: Up to 10,000 nits, the HDR format ceiling TCL itself cites.
• US store: The 75-inch is $3,499.99, marked down $2,500 from $5,999.99; the 98-inch remains $9,999.99.

That street price is the tell. A January flagship that TCL still tows to Berlin is already selling in the United States at a four-figure cut, while the new phones on that same floor have no US on-sale date.

Matte AMOLED Finally Leaves the LCD Years Behind

NXTPAPER used to mean a treated LCD. TCL showed an AMOLED version at Mobile World Congress in March with no phone attached. The P80 Ultra and P80 Pro are the first shipping handsets to use it. The base P80 keeps a 6.83-inch AMOLED panel and drops the paper stack, which is how TCL hits a lower price.

Stefan Streit, chief marketing officer at TCL Europe, called the Ultra the company’s most advanced smartphone to date when the series was unveiled on September 3. He also said a phone should help people “switch off when they choose,” which is a polite way of describing a hardware key that turns a color OLED into a reading slab.

Under the IFA hall lights, the matte face kills the white hotspot you get on glossy glass. At a sharp angle the frost can wash out. Head-on, it reads closer to paper than to a mirror, which is the whole point of putting this coating on an OLED that still claims 3,200 nits at peak and 100% DCI-P3.

HOW NXTPAPER CHANGES THE OLED

• Circular polarizer: TCL rates circular polarization at up to 95%, so the panel stays readable through sunglasses that black out many linear-polarized phones.
• Soft-light stack: A homogenizing film evens RGB sub-pixels, and hardware low-blue-light work is meant to cut harshness without a software filter.
• Dimming: DC dimming in bright scenes and 3,840Hz PWM in the dark, plus an SGS natural-light visual comfort mark.
• NXTPAPER key: A physical slider jumps between color use, Paper Mode, and Max Ink, a monochrome reader layout with fewer notifications.

TCL has spent years training shoppers to want more nits. The P80 is the first time it has asked those same shoppers to want less glare on a panel that can still go very bright. That is not a side feature. It is the product.

What the P80 Ultra Ships in Europe

The Ultra looks like a midrange phone until you get to the glass. It runs a MediaTek Dimensity 7400 Elite on 8GB of RAM, with a software expansion feature TCL bills as 16GB, and 256GB or 512GB of UFS 3.1 storage. Android 16 is on the box. The Ultra and Pro are promised four major OS upgrades and seven years of security patches; the base P80 drops to three OS upgrades and keeps the seven-year security window.

A 50MP 3x periscope with OIS and EIS is the Ultra’s other extra, paired with a 50MP 1/1.56-inch main camera (f/1.88, OIS and EIS), an 8MP autofocus ultra-wide, and a 32MP front camera. TCL quotes 6x lossless zoom from that periscope. The Pro keeps the main and ultra-wide cameras and skips the folded telephoto.

The chassis is 163.34 x 77.69 x 8.26 mm and 197 grams, with IP68 dust and water resistance, dual speakers, and colors in Sunlit Gold, Midnight Blue, and Burgundy. CMF designer Chris Lefteri worked on the finish. The 5,800mAh battery with 45W charging is adequate, not fast by 2026 flagship standards, and 8GB of RAM is the ceiling that will age first.

P80 SERIES AT A GLANCE

Those prices are for the European 256GB openers. Latin America is due in October. TCL has only said the United States comes “a bit later,” with no carrier list and no dollar MSRP. The company likes to remind people it has 27 years in mobile. The P80 still has to live as a midrange Android that happens to own a display nobody else is shipping.

Four Tablets Keep NXTPAPER on LCD Panels

The phones moved the paper coating onto OLED. The TAB A1 family did not. TCL filled the IFA tablet table with four LCD slates in two sizes, each sold with a standard panel or with NXTPAPER, and the 11-inch pair was already priced for the United States on August 31.

The 11-inch TAB A1 NXTPAPER uses NXTPAPER 3A Crystal on a 2.1K 90Hz screen, a MediaTek Helio G100, 6GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, an 8,000mAh battery with 20W charging, and an IP54 rating. It ships at 0.94 lb and 6.2 mm thick, with a stylus and flip case in the US box, and lists at $249.99. The plain TAB A1 is $189.99.

TAB A1 LINEUP

The Plus models step up to a Snapdragon 4 Gen 2, 256GB of storage, and that 10,000mAh cell. They are the couch screens. The 11-inch pair is the bag screens. Both still rely on LCD for the paper trick, so the AMOLED jump is reserved for the phones TCL wants treated as a premium mobile line.

A Walnut Frame Goes After Samsung’s Art TV

The A400 Pro NXTVISION is the living-room version of the same anti-mirror idea. It is a QD-Mini LED set in a light walnut woodgrain frame, with a matte HVA panel, and it switches to an art gallery when you are not watching. TCL has shown sizes from 32 to 98 inches and a built-in collection of more than 80 works. US timing is still unconfirmed.

Gallery TVs used to mean a matte edge-lit panel that looked like a picture and played HDR like a compromise. The A400 Pro puts local dimming behind that matte face, which is the gap TCL is trying to occupy against Samsung’s Frame Pro art TV. Samsung still owns the bezel-and-art-store habit. TCL is betting Mini LED zones and a lower price will matter more than the software gallery.

The X11L even includes Art Mode on a set whose selling point is specular highlights. TCL is not picking a side between a black mirror and a framed print. It is stocking both, then letting the living room decide which object is allowed on the wall.

Europe Gets the New Phones First

IFA is a European show, and the calendar makes that obvious. The bright TV has been a US retail SKU since the CES cycle. The matte phones that justify this week’s headlines are on sale in the EU and still a briefing line in America.

THE 2026 DISPLAY CALENDAR

1. January 5, 2026: TCL unveils the X11L SQD-Mini LED series at CES in Las Vegas.
2. March 2026: NXTPAPER AMOLED appears at Mobile World Congress as a display demo with no phone attached.
3. August 31, 2026: The 11-inch TAB A1 and TAB A1 NXTPAPER go on the US site at $189.99 and $249.99.
4. September 3, 2026: The P80 Ultra, P80 Pro, and P80 are unveiled in Berlin.
5. September 11, 2026: European 256GB P80 models go on sale; Latin America is listed for October.

US shoppers can order the 75-inch X11L from TCL’s own store for $3,499.99. They cannot yet order the P80 Ultra that explains why that TV shared an IFA stand with a paper-coated OLED. The brightness number is old. The matte phone is the part that just became a product, and it is for sale on the other side of the Atlantic.