AT&T, Verizon Wireless and Sprint all announced significant Android smartphones at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show Jan. 9. Samsung Galaxy Note, Motorola Droid 4 and Samsung Galaxy Nexus lead the pack.
Media who proclaimed carriers were
keeping a low profile at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas were
sorely mistaken.
AT&T (NYSE:T), Verizon Wireless and
Sprint (NYSE:S) Jan. 9 all announced major handsets, most of which are based on
Google's Android operating system. AT&T arguably made the loudest noise,
unveiling five handsets and a 4G Long-Term Evolution (LTE) tablet as part of
its 2012 Developer Summit.
Perhaps the most high-profile handset
was the Samsung Galaxy Note "phablet," a phone
with a 5.3-inch, HD Super AMOLED screen that provides some tablet-type real
estate to work with for consumers and business types alike. The handset, which
AT&T has not priced but will launch in the coming weeks, boasts the S Pen
digital pen input technology and software to let users draw, sketch or just
write.
Two more Samsung Android handsets are
coming from AT&T in the coming months. First is the Samsung Galaxy S II
Skyrocket HD, a 4G LTE smartphone with a 4.65-inch HD Super AMOLED screen,
powered by a 1.5GHz dual-core processor. This phone will run either Android 2.3
Gingerbread or Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS).
Second, AT&T will sell the Samsung
Exhilarate, a so-called "green phone" with a 4-inch Super AMOLED
screen composed of 80 percent recycled post-consumer materials and fitted with an
eco calendar and calculator.
AT&T will also sell Sony's Xperia
ion 4G LTE smartphone as the first smartphone to be sold under the Sony brand
in the United States. Launching in the second quarter, the Xperia ion is based
on Gingerbread, and has a 4.6-inch HD display and a 12-megapixel camera.
Pantech and AT&T will also sell the
Pantech Burt 4G LTE Android smartphone, which has a 4-inch Super AMOLED screen,
for $49.99 on a two-year contract, beginning Jan. 22, in titanium or ruby red.
On the same day, AT&T will sell the
Pantech Element 4G LTE Android 3.2 Honeycomb tablet for $299.99 with a two-year
data deal. This waterproof tablet and the Burst phone may be purchased together
on contract for $249.99 for a limited time.
Not to be outdone at CES, Verizon
reteamed with its first Android phone partner Motorola Mobility (NYSE: MMI) to
debut the Motorola Droid 4 4G LTE QWERTY phone. The phone, which runs
Gingerbread but will be upgraded to ICS this year, is half an inch thick and
powered by a dual-core 1.2GHz processor and 1GB of RAM.
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