CES is synonymous with the direction technology is heading for the coming yet, and in years past that has applied to smartphones. 2011 has been a strange year of amazing growth for phones, however. Phones have finally come into their own, with processors more powerful than netbooks, 4G and LTE connectivity, high-quality cameras and camcorders, and screens better than what you find on TVs.

With the hustle of the holiday season, the biggest ever for smartphones (with models like the Motorola Droid Razr, Samsung Galaxy S II, Apple iPhone 4S, and plenty of others all releasing late in the year), nearly every major phone maker gave their biggest shot to hitting the market before Christmas. At this year’s CES, that’s abundantly clear.

There aren’t a lot of phones to see.

However, after some digging and searching, there are a few gems.

Huawei isn’t well known in the US, but recently their handsets have made some headway. The company introduced two new phones at CES, the Ascend P1 and P1 S. Both are almost exactly the same, except that the S stands for slim. And indeed, the P1 S is the slimmest phone ever shown publicly at 6.68mm. By comparison, the Droid Razr is 7.1mm thick. Not much of a difference, but a difference nonetheless

Boasting a 1.5GHz dual core processor (TI OMAP 446), 1GB of RAM, Android 4.0, a 4.3” SuperAMOLED Gorilla Glass screen with a qHD (960 x 540) display, the P1 S is as powerful as today’s best smartphones, but not better. It is, however, thinner. The P1, on the other hand, is like a fat twin brother. All the same parts, but thicker. They both have a plasticy feel but very light in the hand. Both models are expected to release in April.

After purchasing the Ericsson half of Sony Ericsson, Sony announced several models, but most important is the Xperia S, a sleek smartphone that has the best overall specs from any Android phone to date. Not only does it have a high-end 1.5GHz dual core CPU, 1GB of RAM and a 4.3” 720p display, it ships with a front and rear f/2.2 camera. That basically means it can take in more light than most point and shoot cameras, providing better night shots.

What’s most impressive about the camera is shot-to-shot speed. It only takes 0.9 seconds to get from one shot to the next, something no smartphone can do, and a speed most point and shoots also fail to reach. It only takes 1.5 seconds to get from standby mode to a shot, so users can actually hold down the dedicated shutter release and take a picture within a second and a half, for those “oh I need to take a picture of that” moments.

Sony is also touting what they call their Bravia Engine, which is slowly entering all of Sony’s products. The claim is that the Bravia Engine produces more accurate color and resolution reproduction, and thus provides the most accurate colors you can find on a smartphone. Whether this is true or not is something we’ll have to test in the future, but the point is this: it’s so far the only Android smartphone with design specifically for color accuracy and depth.

The Xperia Ion is almost identical to the Xperia S, except that it has a 4.5” display and will release exclusively for AT&T, and is set for release in Q2.

The Xperia S is expected to release sometime in March or April, and will be GSM only. It will ship with Android 2.3.7, and is expected to update to Android 4.0 later in the year.

Nokia Lumia 900 (Read our Hands-on Impressions)

Nokia’s fateful push back into the US market with Windows Phone 7 only started this week with the release of the Lumia 710, but the big news at CES was their new flagship, the Lumia 900. And the phone is no joke. Exclusive to AT&T, the 900 may look like a big deal, but we’ll have to see how it handles before passing that judgment. Because frankly, the internals aren’t all that impressive.

The 900 has a 1.4GHz single core CPU, 512MB of RAM, 14.5GB of user space (it’s 16GB of flash space with 14.5 available) and no memory expansion, and no removable battery. These alone make it seem paltry compared to recently reviewed Android phones, such as the HTC Rezound or Samsung Galaxy S II, but make no mistake; just like Apple doesn’t have to overpower phones because the software is optimized to take advantage of the hardware, neither does Nokia.

What’s more important about the 900 isn’t the low-end specs, but the high-end specs and personalized software. The 12.1MP camera comes from Nokia, which has historically had some of the best cameraphones in the world. The unibody design is sleek, and in the hand is pretty neat. And unlike an iPhone, if you drop this it won’t even dent. The build quality as far as I’ve seen is superb, though very angular.

Still, it’s a Windows device, and if you’re seen our review of the Lumia 800, you know what to expect. A solid phone with Nokia’s biggest battery yet (1830mAh), the Lumia 900 is looking very solid, and we’ll be reviewing it in the near future.

The Lumia 900 is expected to release within the next few months exclusively to AT&T. Sorry international users, you won’t be getting it for awhile. Read more from our full hands-on.

This one may be the most important footnote for smartphones at CES. Motorola’s Droid Razr, possibly the best Android smartphone for Verizon, now has a bigger, bulkier brother. But that extra bulk isn’t fat; it’s all muscle. Motorola has drastically boosted the battery life on the Maxx with a 3300mAh battery, the biggest of any smartphone today. According to Motorola, the monster battery will provide 15 hours of video playback, six hours of continuous streaming video over LTE, ten hours of constant GPS navigation, or 21.5 hours of continuous talk time.

For anyone who lives on their phones, the Droid Razr Maxx will now suddenly sound beyond incredible. It’s the best battery life proposed by any smartphone by a longshot. And all Motorola did was increase the thickness a measly 1.91mm. The Maxx is still thinner than the iPhone 4/4S (9mm vs. 9.3mm).

Aside from the vastly improved battery are the same high-end parts already in the Droid Razr. So for people looking for not only an all-day phone but a powerful one, the Droid Razr Maxx will last you all day, and then some.

The Droid Razr Maxx will release within the next few weeks exclusively for Verizon.

It was only back in October that HTC released the Titan, the biggest Windows phone with a 4.7” display. So I was surprised to find HTC touting a new version, but there are two great reasons to pay attention to this sequel: LTE, and a 16MP camera. Yes, that’s right, a 16MP camera, the biggest on any smartphone by far.

To give you a sense of scale, the recently announced Nikon D4, their new $6,000 flagship DSLR camera, shoots 16MP pictures.

Now we don’t know what the quality of those shots are, but the great thing about increasing the resolution is that those pictures can be compressed and the image quality will improve, especially when viewed on computer screens. However, I’ve spoken to a few Titan owners since the announcement, and they’re not happy that HTC went ahead and updated the phone so soon after releasing the past model.

Besides for the camera and the inclusion of LTE, the Titan II is identical to the original Titan. Same 1.5GHz CPU, same 512MB of RAM, same 16GB of memory, same everything. The Titan II is expected to release sometime in February.

Improving on two key areas from the Droid 3 – the keyboard and LTE connectivity – the Droid 4 brings physical keyboard lovers into the fold of high-speed data. There are slight improvements across the board, but the best are the subtleties. Like now the keyboard is backlit. Or that the keyboard is more centered. With an updated 1.2GHz dual core CPU and 1GB of RAM, the Droid 4 isn’t going to break any hearts on looks and function alone, but if you must have a keyboard and want to take advantage of Verizon’s LTE network, the Droid 4 is your best bet, unless you want last year’s Samsung Stratosphere.

The Droid 4 is expected to release within the next few weeks exclusively for Verizon. Read Justin’s impressions of the Droid 4 for more on the handset.

Samsung has a number of Galaxy S II phones, but none are quite like the Galaxy Note. The Note is huge with a 5.3” screen, and everything about it is bigger than it’s Galaxy counterparts. It has a 1.4GHz CPU instead of the standard 1.2GHz, a 1280x800 resolution display (instead of 800x480), a huge 2,500mAh battery, and a stylus. It doesn’t even sound like a phone anymore, does it?

But that’s the beauty of the note. Like Samsung’s Galaxy Player 5.0, the Note is huge and fills the gap between 3-5” phones and 7-10” tablets. The HD screen is dense enough to fully view web pages and documents while the device fits in the pocket. It’s just small enough to still hold comfortably on calls too, though 5.3” may be the very largest phone size possible.

The Note has been available to European customers since November, and will finally see the light of day in the US sometime this year, though likely sooner than later. It will ship with Android 2.3.6, though it’s likely that when the Galaxy S II phones are updated to Android 4.0, the Note won’t be too far behind.

Intel’s been out of the mobile space for too long, but as Technology Review told us in December, the processor giant’s latest push may make Qualcomm’s utter domination of the mobile CPU market an actual competition. Over the past year Qualcomm processors have been in nearly every smartphone, not only as the CPU but also handling graphics processing. Few devices, like the Samsung Galaxy S II, use other graphics processors, but for the most part it’s all Qualcomm, and they’re all ARM architecture.

Not anymore. Intel is significantly pushing their Medfield processor, and has been working behind the scenes with smartphone makers to implement their own chips into our phones. Intel and Google made an agreement for Android to work with Intel’s architecture, and the first phones with Intel chips are expected to release by the second half of 2012.

What’s the difference? According to Intel, their Medfield processor, which acts as a system-on-a-chip (SoC) works with both phones and tablets, is capable of video playback of Blu-ray quality video, can process high-resolution pictures fast enough to shoot continuously with a phone camera for 15 frames per second, and do any and all of today’s Android functions with relative ease.

Lenovo showed off their China-only K800 which has the Medfield processor, and I watched 1080p video playback that is far better than what you can get on most netbooks today. The phone itself was very fast and smooth, running a 1.6GHz CPU, which powered the 4.5” 720p display and Android 2.3. The phone had stunning speed, and if this is the future of smartphones, the future is looking bright indeed.

Be sure to check back as we find more smartphones on the showfloor.

by James Pikover JANUARY 12, 2012

SOURCE:http://uk.ign.com/articles/2012/01/12/the-smartphones-of-ces-2012