TCL's P80 Ultra moves the matte Nxtpaper screen onto OLED for the first time

The P80 Ultra's screen looked great under the bright lights of TCL's IFA trade show booth, according to The Verge's reviewer, who spent most of two weeks with what they called an otherwise unexceptional midrange Android phone ^[8][16]. Visibility held up even with the phone almost side-on ^[8].

Nxtpaper has always been pitched as more than a matte finish. It adds a paperlike feel and low-power monochrome modes meant to imitate an E Ink screen ^[18]. Here is what users actually did with that package: many treated the missing always-on display, standard on Android for years, as a dealbreaker ^[3]. The reviewer, who has used a couple of earlier Nxtpaper phones, put the extras second too ^[17]. "But the matte effect has always been the biggest draw for me," they wrote ^[5].

OLED fixes both screen complaints at once ^[1]. Blacks are deeper and color is richer than on earlier Nxtpaper panels, and the always-on display finally arrives ^[2][3]. "Previous models have felt a little visually compromised; this one doesn't," the reviewer wrote ^[6]. The matte layer kept the phone comfortable at full brightness and in a dim room, with less flicker and blue light than most displays ^[15].

The extras are still there, behind a side toggle. Paper Mode drains color but leaves streaming apps and games alone by default ^[9]. Max Ink Mode goes strictly monochrome and blocks most apps and OS features ^[10]. The reviewer called the result "something between an e-reader and a dumb phone" ^[11].

Apple shows the same gap between the pitch and the job. It has sold nano-texture glass as an iPad Pro option since 2024, on the grounds that the paperlike surface helps people who draw ^[13]. On the Duo, Apple is relying on the anti-glare effect to make the fold's crease less visible ^[14]. The reviewer has not used the Duo, but called its matte inner screen one of the few things no Android foldable can currently match ^[22].

The case for matte going mainstream rests on product lines. Matte panels already sit under the painterly look of Samsung's Frame TVs and TCL's imitations of them ^[20]. On phones, the Duo gets one on its inner screen only ^[21]. The review does not include sales figures, so buyer demand for matte phones is still unmeasured.

For a team deciding whether to issue these, or a person deciding whether to buy one, I think the right test is the one Nxtpaper buyers already ran. Name the feature that made people reject the last model, check that it is gone, then weigh what is left. On the P80 Ultra the always-on display is fixed, and the speed and camera problems remain ^[3][7].

Then place the user on two axes. One is how much of the day the screen is read in glare. The other is how much the work depends on a fast phone with a good camera.

Heavy glare and light demands is where the P80 Ultra fits; the reviewer found the anti-glare finish made it an excellent phone in bright environments ^[19]. For heavy glare and heavy demands, a matte protector on a phone that already performs is the option most phones are limited to ^[12]. If the screen rarely meets glare and the work is light, Max Ink Mode is the reason to consider it. The last quadrant, low glare and heavy demands, leaves no case for this phone.