Do you need a 120,600mAh battery pack that weighs nine pounds and can charge a smartphone 40 times before it needs a charge itself?

No, you don’t — but you really want one.

Anker has just released the PowerHouse , which is as much battery pack as a generator, which is how Anker refers to it on its site and via Amazon.

According to its own numbers, Anker says you’ll also be able to charge a laptop about 15 times, power a mini fridge for about seven hours or keep a 15 volt light on for 100 hours.

A dense lithium ion battery powers everything, and Anker claims it has been impact tested and is shock resistant. The PowerHouse has a DC converter, an AC plug and four USB hubs (with Anker’s IQ charging standard to charge devices as fast as possible).

For $399 (with the promo code ANKPower for preorders), the PowerHouse can be yours starting May 22. It’s normal retail price is $499.

The Galaxy J2 DTV is Samsung’s first phone with a digital TV tuner

Increasingly, people in the West are ‘ cutting the cord ‘, and ditching broadcast TV services for cheaper online offerings, like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video. But elsewhere, old-school television is holding strong, as demonstrated by the new Samsung Galaxy J2 DTV .

At face value, the Galaxy J2 DTV is a pretty humdrum phone. Its specifications are nothing to write home about. It has a positively mediocre 5MP front shooter, and a 2MP selfie camera. It scrapes by with 1GB of RAM, and packs last year’s veritably wheezy Samsung Exynos 3475 SoC . As far as its screen is concerned, it has a 4.7-Inch Super AMOLED Display, rated to 234 PPI. And it doesn’t even run Marshmallow.

But what separates this device from the legion of other low-range handsets is the inclusion of a Digital TV tuner, thereby allowing anyone to watch broadcast television from anywhere.

This isn’t going to replace anyone’s big-screen TV. Watching movies and films on a 4.7 inch screen isn’t going to be nearly as enjoyable as it would be sat on your couch, remote in hand.

While Samsung hasn’t been forthcoming with battery performance specifications, I imagine this feature is a major power suck and would drain the J2 DVT’s 2000 mAh battery quickly.

The Galaxy J2 DTV is available to buy now. It’s only being sold in the Philippines, where it has a price tag of 6,990 pesos.

While handsets will likely find their way to eBay in the West, you’d be advised to hold fire on buying one, as the digital TV feature probably won’t work, as the Philippines uses the Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting (ISDB) standard, while Europe and America uses the Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) and Advanced Television System Committee (ATSC) standards respectively.

4 drones almost collided with British planes in 2015

A report from the British Airline Pilots Association (BALPA) today said that four drones almost caused collisions with commercial aircraft in 2015.

According to the report , the incidents were classed as ‘category A’ which means a serious risk of collision existed. So much so, that one drone came “very close” to a Boeing 737 taking off at Standsted.

During that incident on September 13 2015 , the pilot spotted a purple remote control aircraft within meters of the airplane at about 4,000 feet during takeoff. It happened so quickly that the pilots were unable to react or take evasive reaction.

Another incident involving a Chinook military helicopter saw a drone with attached camera pass just outside the rotor disk, narrowly avoiding collision during a “simulated engine malfunction.”

The association urges that pilots need technology to ensure drones cannot fly near airports and to find a way to make them appear on radars, so that planes and air traffic control are able to see them ahead of time.

In the US, the FAA says that you should not fly a drone within 5 miles of an airport and must be registered , however a similar rule doesn’t apply yet in the United Kingdom.

Steve Landells, BALPA Flight Safety Specialist, said that “pilots can see that drones can be useful and fun to fly, but these near misses are becoming too regular an occurrence. We must act now to protect passengers and flight crew and make sure a catastrophic crash does not happen.”

➤ Serious drone near misses prompt warning from pilots [BALPA]