LG X Power quick review

So my trusty old Google Nexus 5 was starting to be a little less trusty. Specifically the GPS stopped working properly. Looks like the antenna isn't working right but I haven't been able to fix it. At about this same time, I see an announcement for the LG X Power. A mid range smartphone with a huge 4100mah battery. Not only that, but it's available on Wind for free on Wintab. As a Wind customer, I decided to try it out as a temporary replacement until the HTC made Nexus line gets released later this year.

For $250 CAD, this is a great phone. It's got middle of the road specs, but in every case that is fine. I Quad core 1.3Ghz Processor that felt adequate. 16GB of Storage, which is fine since it has a Micro SD card slot. The phone is rather large for my tastes, which makes the 720p screen more noticeable that it would be on a smaller screen. It lacks NFC, but in Canada that is not a huge deal as mobile payments are still being neutered by banks and carriers. LGs flavour of Android is ok, but most can be quickly replaced with stock Google apps, like the launcher. The biggest feature of this phone though is the huge battery. Something that other phones these days is sorely lacking. The big phone of the moment is the OnePlus 3. It's a great phone, if your battery lasts long enough for you to use it. This phone doesn't excel at anything except that you can seriously use the phone all day and still have battery life leftover. 

The biggest let down, and why I ultimately returned the phone, is that the bootloader is locked. This is also why I didn't get any photos of the actual phone I had. LG provides a tool to unlock the bootloaders of their phones. That tool did not support this phone at the time of writing. Even if it did, unlocking is irreversible and voids the warranty. For me this is a must, but if you don't care, I highly recommend this phone as a middle of the road phone.