The Verge - The phones of CES 2012

Fujitsu displays first Tegra 3 phone behind glass

2012-01-13T18:19:44Z

Fujitsu's going to be among the first to sell a smartphone running Nvidia's new Tegra 3 processor, and we got to take a look at the upcoming handset phone at the company's CES booth. The phone's raw power was being demoed mirroring a jet ski racing game to a TV and using a wireless controller, but — and this is a running theme with Fujitsu's phone at the moment — it wasn't even really running through the phone. Reps told us only that "this is the functionality the phone will have in five weeks" when it's released, and given its quad-core processor and 12-GPU graphics accelerator, we have no trouble believing that claim. The phone's other specs are similarly insane: a 13.1-megapixel camera, a 4.6-inch HD display, Android 4.0, and LTE...

Fujitsu Toshiba IS12t Windows Phone hands-on

2012-01-12T22:46:51Z

We came across this curio at Fujitsu's CES booth — the Fujitsu Toshiba IS12t is the only Windows Phone to have seen release in Japan, as far as we know, and was the first Mango phone to be released anywhere in the world. This isn't likely to ever see an international release, and there's not a whole lot to separate it from other Windows Phone devices in terms of software, but the hardware is pretty neat. The phone is fairly thin at 10.6mm, with a 3.7-inch display and waterproof body that comes in a stately black or a neon yellow or pink. There's also a 13.2 megapixel camera, which seemed to take shots of a CES booth as nicely as any other phone we've seen this week.

Porsche Design BlackBerry P'9981: the inside story (hands-on video)

2012-01-12T20:21:42Z

When a purported Porsche Design BlackBerry device first leaked last year, many quickly dismissed it — for a company in crisis, a lavish, over-designed rehash of the Bold seemed like the last thing RIM needed to be worrying about. As a longtime BlackBerry user myself, however, there was something about it that seemed "inherently BlackBerry," and the rumors were confirmed to be true when the device was officially unveiled in Dubai in late September. I was oddly intrigued by the polarizing device, but it took until CES this year to get my hands on one. I got to discuss the device with RIM's Senior VP of Design Todd Wood here at CES 2012 to get the back story on the collaboration — and some of the details may surprise you.

The concept...

Panasonic KX-UT870 corded Android phone hands-on: this changes nothing

2012-01-11T22:51:25Z

There are game changers, there are disruptive technologies, and then there's Panasonic's KX-UT870, an industrial-grade corded desk phone announced recently that's being shown off here at CES 2012. The concept, while simple, is a bit baffling: it's an IP phone grafted to a 7-inch resistive Android 2.2 tablet of the lowest possible quality (imagine one of those off-brand units you'd find at a drug store). That's it. All control (dialing and so on) goes through the touchscreen, which seems reasonably sensitive considering that it's resistive — but that doesn't really excuse the fact that it's resistive when virtually every price category of smartphone has now migrated to capacitive. The KX-UT870, at $499, is decidedly not an entry-level...

Toshiba 21:9 phone and tablet prototypes hands-on

2012-01-11T19:04:56Z

We were just able to take a close-up look at three Toshiba prototypes — two tablets and a 5.1-inch phone with a 21:9 aspect ratio. The two tablets, one 7.7-inch and the other 13.3, don't present any big surprises, but they're light and thin, with rounded corners and a textured back. More exciting is the phone, which demonstrates an elongated aspect ratio that allows the large-screened device to still fit in a pocket. Unlike the tablets, the phone has a brushed-aluminum back and sharper corners.

Although we weren't able to see much of the devices in action, we successfully (in fact, accidentally) powered on the larger tablet, and were assured that the other prototypes were functional as well. Despite that, Toshiba isn't sure these will...

Motorola Motoluxe and Defy Mini hands-on

2012-01-11T18:54:10Z

Motorola recently announced two mid-range smartphones here at CES 2012 and we spent some time with both devices at the company's booth. The Motoluxe and Defy Mini are running Motorola's new MotoSwitch UI (the new Motoblur?) on Android 2.3.7 and 2.3.6, respectively. MotoSwitch learns which contacts the user interacts with most and then syndicates them in a cluster on the homescreen (pictured above), and the same goes with applications.

The Defy Mini has a 3.2-inch display and feels quite small and lightweight in the hand. It's a bit chunky for it's size, too, and interestingly enough, the phone supports a landscape homescreen. Moto's Motoluxe felt about as weighty as the iPhone 4S, but with way more curvature along its plastic backing....

Dyle Mobile TV on MetroPCS: over the air broadcast TV on Android and iOS (video)

2012-01-11T08:11:45Z

One-seg TV tuning has been around for ages in Japan, but no one's been successful at bringing it Stateside. The folks at MetroPCS and Mobile Content Venture — a joint venture of 12 content providers including Fox and NBC— want to be the first with Dyle Mobile TV. Dyle relies on a two-part system to get broadcasts on your device — some kind of antenna, and a downloadable app for iOS or Android. Because there's no hardware required in-device, practically anything running iOS or Android phone is capable of receiving broadcasts, and because there's no need to be connected to the internet, you don't have to pay anything extra for all of the reruns you're watching on your way home from work.

Dyle showed us a prototype Samsung phone with...

Lenovo K800 hands-on: first Intel-powered phone, with Android 4.0 and 720p display

2012-01-11T02:03:12Z

We're at Showstoppers at CES in Vegas, and we just got a first look at Lenovo's new K800 smartphone, the first in the world to run on Intel's Medfield chipset. We liked the design of the phone's hardware, though it's a little thick. It will run a heavily skinned version of Android 4.0 (though the model we saw ran Android 2.3.7), which looks similar to the skins on Lenovo's tablets. It's got a 1.6GHz Intel processor, a 4.5-inch 720p HD TFT display, an 8-megapixel camera, a WCDMA HSPA+ 21Mbps wireless radio, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0, and GPS onboard. It's also got WiDi onboard, which Lenovo says "enables screen sync to a TV at 720p30." The phone felt pretty snappy, but we'll reserve real judgment for when we can spend more time with...