Confused? You will be after taking a close look at LG’s widening X Series range

By Andy Boxall Published July 5, 2016

There’s nothing more confusing in the tech world than an extensive range of similar smartphones, with similar names, and similar specifications. LG continues to baffle with its X Series, and has announced the X5, X Power, and X Skin, which join the X Cam, X Screen, X Mach, X Style, and X Max. To make sure our brains are nicely fried, it has talked about the X Power before, and the X Skin looks suspiciously like the X Style, just with a different name.

None of the new phones have the guts to challenge the LG G5, and none have a slot to accept any of the G5’s Friend modules either, which is understandable given their affordable specifications. We’ll start by looking at the LG X5. It has a big 5.5-inch display with an HD resolution, which we expect to mean 1280 x 720 pixels, but the body is really slim and light — just 7.2mm and 133 grams respectively.

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This X5 isn’t a fireball, powered by a modest 1.3GHz quad-core processor with 2GB of RAM, and there’s 16GB of internal storage memory. The good news is a MicroSD card slot will increase this, but only by another 32GB. Interestingly, LG has given the X5 a removable battery, something of a rarity these days, even among low-cost devices. Android 6.0 Marshmallow is installed, plus there is a 13-megapixel rear camera and a 5-megapixel front camera onboard.

The X Power was briefly discussed in mid-June, but now we have a complete list of its specifications. The phone gets its name from the large 4,100mAh battery inside, but the screen is smaller than the X5 at 5.3-inches. It shares the same HD resolution panel, 13 megapixel and 5 megapixel cameras, processor, RAM, and storage space. The body is marginally thicker at 7.9mm, and slightly heavier at 129 grams.

Finally, the X Skin is the slimmest of the three at only 6.9mm thick, and it weighs just 122 grams. The reason is the similarly tiny 2,100mAh battery inside. This needs to drive the same 1.3GHz quad-core processor, but only gets 1.5GB of RAM to help Android 6.0 make it through the day. This is the same specification as the already official X Style, indicating the name may change depending on where the phone is put on sale.

At the moment, the X5, X Power, and X Skin are going to be sold in South Korea.

Former Senior Mobile Writer

Andy has written about mobile technology for almost a decade. From 2G to 5G and smartphone to smartwatch, Andy knows tech.

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