TCL
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| Basic information | |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1981 |
| Legal Structure | Public |
| Industry | Electronics,Phones,TVs,Home appliances,Finance |
| Also known as | TCL,TCL Technology Group Corp,TCL Corporation,TCL Technology |
| Official website | https://www.tcl.com/ |
TCL Technology Group Corp is a Chinese partially state-owned electronics company headquartered in Huizhou, Guangdong province. TCL develops, manufactures, and sells consumer electronics like television sets, mobile phones, air conditioners, washing machines, refrigerators, and small electrical appliances.
Consumer-impact summary
- User freedom: Many TCL phones have perma-locked bootloaders.[1]
- User privacy: According to their privacy policy, they will share some telemetry with 3rd-parties.[2]
- User experience: Some of their electronic products, especially Android phones, have many bugs.[3] Some bugs are very disruptive, such as screens "randomly" turning off when brightness is low.[4]
- Market control: In 2010, it was the world's 25th-largest consumer electronics producer.[5] It was the second-largest television manufacturer by market share in 2022 and 2023.[6]
Incidents
This is a list of all consumer-protection incidents this company is involved in. Any incidents not mentioned here can be found in the TCL category.
Misleading marketing of QLED TVs (2026)
The second-largest TV maker has to stop calling its QLED TV sets that, as Samsung cries foul. The misleading advertising claims that TCL TVs use quantum dot technology, but the courts disagree.[7]
Broken promises of software updates
For several years, TCL has failed to fulfill their promise of upgrading many Android phones. So much so that they're blatantly lying about the ETA.[3]
Non-compliance with software licenses
TCL refuses to make most of its firmware publicly available. This breaks a Google contract, and may violate GPL.[8]
References
- ↑ Lost-Entrepreneur439 (2024-11-18). "Bootloader Unlock Wall of Shame: TCL / BlackBerry". GitHub.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ↑ "TCL Privacy Notice for Business Customers and Partners".
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ↑ 3.0 3.1 u/SoheilBalini (2025-09-09). "TCL update policy". Reddit.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ↑ u/Rudxain (2026-03-22). "TCL 505 here, still Android 14. You're right about bugs, the screen "randomly" turns off when the brightness is "low" (even 50% is considered low). It's coded to turn off the backlight when the hardware (not Android) brightness goes below 0, and it's also coded to decrease the brightness if the image is "dark". A black image with small white spots is considered "darker" than a pitch black image, so I can't watch some 3blue1brown videos in peace 🥲 TCL is a scam, worse than zamzung, I'd dare to say. I'm gonna boycott them till I die or they get sued".
{{cite web}}: line feed character in|title=at position 451 (help) - ↑ Richards, David (2019-11-24). "TCL Set To Be A Major Global CE & Smartphone Brand, Roadmap Revealed". Retrieved 2024-08-11.
- ↑ Pr, Ani (2024-03-13). "TCL Ranked as Global Top 2 TV Brand and No. 1 in 98 TV Category for Two Consecutive Years". ThePrint. Retrieved 2024-08-11.
- ↑ Zlatev, Daniel (2026-03-05). "TCL can't advertise TVs as QLED since they lack in quantum dots and color accuracy". Notebookcheck.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ↑ "TCL has been actively ignoring my firmware requests". Reddit. 2022-07-10.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)