Marketing fail: TCL P80 Ultra has 3x thicker bezels than advertised

The TCL P80 Ultra was officially unveiled on Tuesday. On paper, this mid-range smartphone is quite interesting, as TCL guarantees seven years of security patches, features a relatively large 5,800 mAh battery, a 50 MP periscope telephoto camera, and, most notably, the first NxtPaper display based on an AMOLED panel.

We had the chance to check out the device at IFA, and the quality of this new generation of NxtPaper displays really impressed us at first glance. However, TCL isn’t being entirely honest in its marketing of this mid-range smartphone. That’s because the extremely thin bezels that TCL shows in the official product images don’t actually exist. In fact, the TCL P80 Ultra doesn’t even have bezels that are the same thickness on all four sides – the "chin" at the bottom of the display is visibly thicker than the bezels on the other three sides.

A quick measurement reveals that the bottom bezel is more than three times as thick as advertised. While this could be an error in the render images, the fact that the bezels in particular are so often misrepresented suggests that this might be a deliberate attempt to mislead. TCL even misrepresents the size of the punch hole, which actually takes up significantly more space than shown in the promotional images. As this example shows once again, it’s not a good idea to blindly trust smartphone manufacturers’ marketing claims. Before making a purchase, it’s strongly recommended that you read independent reviews to avoid any unpleasant surprises when you unbox the device.