world of electronics

HTC's new Desire: Making a higher-end phone cost less. A lot less (hands-on) If "budget phone" conjures images of a clunky plastic handset with blah-blah specs, you'll want to chuck that notion now. HTC is on a mission to deliver flagship-level features in a phone that costs less than half of many of today's premium handsets. HTC on Tuesday announced the midrange Desire 10 Pro, alongside the far more entry-level (and cheaper!) Desire 10 Lifestyle. For now, both phones will sell only in Europe, with the Desire 10 Pro arriving at the beginning of November. We don't know for how much, although the company confirmed it would be less than the flagship  HTC 10 , which costs $699, £569 and AU$1,099. You'll be able to buy the Desire 10 Lifestyle at the end of September for £249, which converts to about $325 and AU$430. The Pro is aimed at consumers who want high-end performance at a midrange price, while the Lifestyle is for those on a set budget. The...

P anasonic retakes the lead in the advanced compact competition with its LX100. Really good photo and video quality, a great set of features and (for the most part) class-leading performance, result in one of my favorite compact cameras ever. Despite a full auto mode, however, newbies might face a steep climb up the learning curve. At $900 (£800, AU$1,200), it's also pretty expensive if you're just looking for an upgrade to better photo and video than whatever you're using now. As a companion for a dSLR or an alternative to a midrange interchangeable-lens model, though, it's definitely worth considering. Image quality The combination of a great lens and large -- for its class -- sensor yield extremely good photo quality. JPEG images look clean as high as ISO 800 and good through ISO 1600; by ISO 3200 the JPEGs display noise reduction smearing. If you shoot raw, though, you can eke out more detail resolution as high as ISO 12800. However, there isn't...

Canon Rebel T7i $800 dSLR gets first major update in a loooong time Normally, I like to steer people toward last-generation (or more) models for the best value on a budget, and that's especially true with Canon's entry-level dSLRs, the Rebel series in the US. The newer cameras tend to get trickled-down technology from older, higher-end models whose prices have dropped, and it just makes sense to buy those better models instead of the new one with the ancient insides. But the Rebel T7i (800D in the UK and Australia) represents Canon's first truly significant update to the series, really since the T2i in 2010. The T6i got a new-to-it sensor and autofocus system in 2015, but that was a transitional change. The T7i's body remains the same as its predecessor's, but it finally incorporates Canon 's Dual Pixel CMOS sensor, a 3-year-old technology with on-chip phase-detection autofocus that's in almost all Canon's other interchangeable-lens camera lin...

Tere are so many bad things I can say about the Leica Sofort instant camera. I can tell you how I struggled to make it focus, how expensive it is compared to other instant cameras, how the film's plastic packaging is wasteful or simply how it's fundamentally pointless in an age of affordable digital cameras. But if you're looking for an instant camera, you don't care about any of that. The Leica Sofort is for anyone who loves the retro thrill of instant photography and wants a camera from an iconic brand. You just have to decide whether it's worth splashing out for that pleasure. The Leica Sofort sells for £230, $349 or AU$399 with 10 sheets of film starting at £10, $15 or AU$17. That makes it significantly more expensive than the  Polaroid Snap  or the Fuji Instax Mini, the latter of which costs only £55 ($55, AU$99) and uses the exact same film. While the Leica has a few additional features, such as its double exposure mode, you're mostly just pa...

Xiaomi is following the footsteps of Apple and local rival Huawei , on Tuesday in Beijing announcing the Mi 5C -- a phone powered by the company's first in-house processor, the Surge S1. The Mi 5C looks to be a cheaper, less powerful iteration of last year's excellent  Mi 5 . Like that phone, it has a 5.15-inch screen. Unlike that phone, it has 3GB of RAM, a 12-megapixel rear camera and a 2,860mAh battery . Compare that to the Mi 5's 4GB of RAM, 16-megapixel rear camera and 3,000mAh battery. But the Mi 5C clearly wins on price: It'll cost 1,500 yuan, which converts to around $220, AU$280 and £175, when it launches on March 3 in China . That's a good bit lower than the 2,700 yuan ($400, AU$500, £315) the Mi 5 cost last year. The Mi 5C houses Xiaomi's own 2.2GHz Surge S1 chipset, built by Pinecone, a subsidiary started by the company two years ago. Xiaomi claims the S1 Surge outperforms the Snapdragon 625, Qualcomm's midrange chipset. The Mi 5C k...

Sony Xperia Ear personal assistant earphone concept rattles your brain pan Imagine a virtual assistant that feeds you information on tap but doesn't require you to wear eyegear or block outside sounds. Sony has pulled the tarpaulin off its newest earphone, the  Xperia Ear  "Open-Style Concept," which is the company's latest stab at Google Assistant-fueled headgear. Like the existing Xperia Ear, this concept is powered by the Sony Agent Technology personal assistant, which is operated through voice interaction and head gestures. The Concept is a mono wireless headset and uses Bluetooth to connect to your phone. Unlike the original  Xperia Ear , though, this concept earpiece use bone conduction to transmit music and conversations to your inner ear. It does this with "two highly powerful spatial acoustic conductors and driver units." This keeps your lugholes free to hear the environment around you. Though it has an in-ear piece, this is for anchoring ...

if you're a hard-core Nintendo fan or a lover of Zelda games , you may have already preordered the Switch. And as you play the spectacular Breath of the Wild on day one, on your TV or on the Switch's built-in 6.2-inch screen, you'll feel like it's worth every penny. For everyone else, the easy decision on the Switch is to wait. Zelda is flat-out phenomenal, but otherwise, the Switch feels like an empty vessel, waiting for a deeper catalog of games and online features to take advantage of what is arguably Nintendo's most ambitious and risky effort to date. Nintendo has really swung for the fences here: the Switch is a hybrid console, meaning it can be played on a TV at home or on the go as a handheld. The Joy-Con controllers make the Switch a veritable Transformer: keep them attached to the sides in tablet mode, slide them off and prop up the screen on a table to play one- or two-player games, or dock the Switch in its included charging cradle to play on...