Manufacturers everywhere are working with Google’s mobile OS to bring dozens if not hundreds of new phones to market. Here’s just a select few of the phones we expect the industry to present this week and next at CES.
Motorola Olympus – It’s unclear if Motorola, Google, or Verizon will officially unveil this dual-core Tegra 2 based monster of a phone. With the recently (controlled) leaked images, it’s hard to say we won’t see some of Motorola’s powerful new device at CES.
LG “2X” or “Speed” – LG’s carrier affiliation for this dual core Tegra 2 phone is currently unknown but it’s shown up in several videos around the net with impressive responsiveness we can only expect from dual-core gear. If LG has plans to bring this handset to the US market, it’s fair to say we’ll see an announcement at CES.
HTC DROID Incredible HD/Thunderbolt 4G – Verizon’s direct competitor to Sprint’s EVO 4G brings a 4.3 inch touch screen with a more typical resolution (800×480) than their DROID X (854×480) whose aspect ratio has been known to cause issues in some games. We expect the new generation Snapdragon chipset with the improved Adreno 205 GPU also seen in the G2 and myTouch 4G to be a major improvement over the DROID X. It’s worth mentioning possible LTE 4G support on Verizon’s network. It’s seen leaning casually on it’s kickstand.
EVO Shift 4G – Sprint’s next iteration or expansion of the EVO branding brings a horizontal slide-out qwerty keyboard along with the same updated Snapdragon chipset that we expect in the DROID Incredible HD. It makes use of HTC’s Sense which can be either good or bad depending on who your asking and will, of course ship with Sprint’s WiMAX network support.
Motorola Cliq 2 – We can’t say we’re excited to see the Cliq branding living on, the original Cliq was generally considered underpowered and mediocre hardware doesn’t help gaming. Don’t expect any benchmark records broken here; it’s probably just as low end with few improvements that keep it tied to the original’s branding with MOTO’s BLUR skin.
Carriers are likely to assault the low end market with Android phones at CES this year, and we’ll probably be seeing dozens of replacements for texting and feature phones. I’m speculating the expansion of simple games on the Android Market because of the growing low-end market for Android this year.
