9 Great Phones At CES 2012 - Part 1
Sony Xperia Ion (AT&T)
The first Sony-branded smartphone, the Xperia Ion offers a stunning 4.6-inch, 720-by-1280-pixel (720p) glass screen and a 12-megapixel camera. Under the hood is a 1.5GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor that can handle PlayStation-caliber games in addition to music and video. Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) is the unfortunate default OS, but Sony is promising an ICS upgrade later this year. Sony is still sorting out just which PlayStation games will work on this thing (PS1? PS2? Xperia Play? Tablet?), but it's clear the Xperia Ion will be a serious competitor on its arrival in the second quarter.
HTC Titan II (AT&T)
America's first 16-megapixel camera phone is here, and it's a doozy. The massive HTC Titan II sports Windows Phone 7.5, LTE data speeds, and a 4.7-inch screen, and can snap photos with a resolution of 4,640-by-3,840 pixels. The rest of its specs aren't as impressive, thanks to some leftover Microsoft-specified restrictions, but you still get a fast (single-core) 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S2 processor, 480-by-800-pixel screen resolution, 720p camcorder, and 16GB of internal storage (albeit with no memory card slot).
Nokia Lumia 900 (AT&T)
Now this is what we were waiting for. Nokia finally shows off its first high-end Windows Phone 7 device, as the preceding
Nokia Lumia 710 was too budget-oriented to inspire much buzz. The LTE-equipped
Lumia 900 packs an 8-megapixel-camera, Carl Zeiss optics, and a 4.3-inch AMOLED Clear Black display. As part of Microsoft's last CES keynote, the powerful Nokia Lumia 900 may be a fitting sendoff.
Huawei Ascend P1 S (Carrier TBA)
Who would have expected the world's thinnest smartphone to come from Huawei? The
Ascend P1 S is just 0.26 inches thick, which is two hundredths of an inch thinner than the Motorola Droid RAZR. The Ascend P1 S impresses in other ways too, with a 4.3-inch, 540-by-960-pixel Super AMOLED display, a 1.5GHz TI OMAP 4460 dual-core processor, a pair of cameras, and Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) preloaded. No word on a carrier yet for this one, though.
Lenovo K800 (China's Unicom)
Intel's Atom chip was fine for low-power netbooks, but it has traditionally been too power-hungry for smartphones. The Lenovo K800 could change that, at least in China—and, if successful, finally brand Intel as a player in the smartphone market, after years of empty promises and false starts. The K800 is no slouch otherwise, either, with a 4.5-inch, 720p multi-touch screen, Wi-Di, and a massive battery. We're keeping a close eye on this one, as well as Intel's other deal with Motorola, which could bring us a U.S. device sooner rather than later.
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