Geek News

LG is launching a new V30 variant at CES 2018, targeting those not quite fond of the phone's original black, blue, silver and lavender color schemes. The upcoming version is called "raspberry red," a muted red-pink that's much darker than the "pink rose" Samsung Galaxy S8. LG's V30 is a flawed phone that's both powerful and unpolished -- it performs very well, but it has a dim, gritty screen. It produces fantastic sounds, but its camera could perform better in low light, and it has a middling battery life. The raspberry red version will be no different from the other colors, but LG's likely hoping that the new eye-catching hue can convince people still on the fence to finally purchase the phone. It will initially be available in LG's home country, South Korea, right after CES and will roll out in Europe's and Asia's key markets afterward. Unfortunately, it's not clear if the raspberry red V30 will come out in the US -- you mi...

US Customs and Immigration computers went down at various airports around the US yesterday, causing some havoc for travelers returning from holidays. It left hundreds of folks stuck in lines for a couple of hours in a part of the airport where there's normally not a lot to do. The agency didn't say what caused the problem, but said "there is no indication the service disruption was malicious in nature." As Reuters notes, a similar outage occurred at the same time last year, so it might be that the customs systems were slammed with Christmas travelers and couldn't handle the excess traffic. Agents were still able to process passengers using an alternative system, albeit at a much slower rate. Passengers depend heavily on some pretty wonky airport tech. Many airlines use ancient reservation systems, and even new ones like the Amadeus Altea system can go down , causing airport chaos. Despite those inconveniences, let's not forget that 2017 was the safest ye...