world of electronics

LG X Power 2: Hands-on with an absolute battery beast A full day of battery life is pretty much the holy grail of the smartphone world, where intense use sucks down battery reserves faster than a kid with a juice box. But two days of battery life? That's a pretty rare feat. LG's X Power 2, a followup to last year's X Power, claims it can go two days on a single charge, driven by a high-capacity battery. It clocks in at 4,500mAh, compared to the X Power's 4,100mAh battery pack. And no, you can't remove it. LG claims it can play 15 hours of continuous video, and charge up to 50 percent of its battery in an hour. The whole charge should take two hours total. Like most other phones, it uses Quick Charge technology. But what does "two days" mean? A full 48 hours of use or more like 16 to 20? We won't know for sure until we test it ourselves. We did get a chance to see the X Power 2 in person. While it's got mostly midrange specs, the phone ...

Nokia 3 and 5 bring up the middle of its new Android phone lineup Nokia is back in the game and expanding its range. The legendary Finnish company probably made your first phone, but its dominance came to an abrupt end in 2014 when it sold its entire phone business to Microsoft. Fortunately for fans, a bunch of former Nokia employees have formed a company called HMD Global to make Nokia phones anew. They began with the Nokia 6, which is now joined by the mid-range Nokia 3 and Nokia 5. The Nokia 5 is a 5.2-inch mid-range model with an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. The 3 is a 5-inch phone with a quad-core chip. Both phones are loaded with pure Android -- and nothing else. Nokia has added no extra bloatware to the Android Nougat firmware, which means the company can promise they stay "pure, secure and up to date". Nokia says it will also provide monthly security updates so your phone stays healthy. The new phones are set to be released in spring thi...

Nokia 3 and 5 bring up the middle of its new Android phone lineup

is a $60 phone too cheap to be good? And is it so cheap that you won't care? That's what I wanted to know about the ad-supported Amazon Prime version of Blu's R1 HD phone, which knocks down the original retail price -- originally $110 for the 16GB model and $100 for 8GB version -- by showing you advertisements on the phone's lock screen. It'd be a tempting price for Prime members who cast a blind eye to ads with one exception: the R1 HD isn't very good. Its camera is mediocre, its performance is inconsistent, and call volume on audio speaker is too low to listen to comfortably. Sixty dollars (or $50 for the 8GB version with ads), however, is cheap enough to justify buying the phone for a kid, or an overseas guest or maybe even as an emergency backup. You seriously can't find that low a price on any modern smartphone. But for a little more, you have better, more reliable budget options, like the Samsung Galaxy J3 ($110 to $180, depending on the carri...

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...