The Verge - The race to the thinnest phone at MWC 2012

HTC's dark materials: hands-on photos with the gray One S, black One X

2012-02-28T16:20:20Z

HTC is touting the design quality of the One X and One S heavily and one major focus isn't the shape of the phones, but the materials that they're made of. The One X has a polycarbonate body that we like almost as much as the Lumia 800, but it's materials on the One S that really stand out. The One S has an aluminum shell with one of two finishes: a straightforward, gray aluminum body with a "gradient anodized" finish that has a very subtle light-to-dark shade. Android Central first spotted the gray version and so we swung by Google's booth to check it out for ourselves. It has a slightly cleaner, simpler feel compared to the complex feel of the black version, with a blue ring about the camera instead of a red one.

The black version of...

ZTE Era and PF112 HD: two Android 4.0 smartphones that should be just one (hands-on photos and video)

2012-02-27T19:02:52Z

ZTE announced a very, very large number of phones today at Mobile World Congress, but the two that are actually notable are the Era and the PF112 HD. The Era is ZTE's flagship, sporting both a quad-core Tegra 3 processor and a brand name that ZTE is not afraid to use in a pun on its new Android push. The Era has a 4.3-inch 960 x 540 display and is 7.8mm thick, with 8GB of storage and 1GB of RAM. It's designed for HSPA+ networks, but is not going to have LTE.

Despite being the so-called flagship, the Era managed to get shown up by the PF112 HD in at least one category: the screen. Of all of ZTE's phones today, the PF112 stands out the most with its 4.5-inch 1028 x 720 screen. It's not the best screen we've seen here at MWC, but it's...

Nokia's Stefan Pannenbecker on design: 'thinness isn't everything'

2012-02-27T16:00:33Z

Stefan Pannenbecker is the Vice President for Industrial Design at Nokia, where his job consists mostly of trying out a variety of crazy new ideas in search of the one or two that would help Nokia maintain its edge in design. The company's fiercely loyal fanbase has grown at least in part due to some iconic designs (remember the 8110?) and a consistently excellent build quality in its phones. Those are the hardware design department's chief competencies and the things Pannenbecker has been entrusted to maintain. Keep reading for our full interview below, including a guest visit from Kevin Shields, who just wanted to tell us that everything at Nokia is presently, has always been, and will forever continue to be awesome.

ZTE Era announced with Tegra 3, 4.3-inch screen, and Android 4.0

2012-02-27T09:51:42Z

ZTE has announced the Era, a quad-core Android 4.0 smartphone with a Nvidia Tegra 3 SoC, 4.3-inch 960 x 540 qHD Screen, and a body that's only 7.8mm thin. The Tegra 3 processor's a quad-core chip clocked at 1.3GHz, which ZTE has backed with 1GB RAM and 8GB storage.

In terms of connectivity, the handset offers a quad-band cell radio with HSPA+ support, along with Bluetooth 3.0, Wi-Fi, and UMA support for Wi-Fi calling. There's also a MHL port for hooking up your handset to the TV, HD Voice capability, Dolby-engineered sound, and DLNA for streaming your media to other capable devices. Judging by the images, ZTE's Mifavor skin doesn't look like too much of a departure over the stock Ice Cream Sandwich experience. The company says that the...

Panasonic Eluga Power 5-inch prototype with ICS and Eluga 4.3-inch hands on photos and video

2012-02-27T09:18:14Z

Panasonic had a surprise for us at MWC, a 5-inch prototype Eluga Power, an Android smartphone running Android 4.0. The Power was clearly running an early build of Ice Cream sandwich, there were bugs and issues throughout as we navigated through the device. However, if Panasonic can work the bugs out it might have a real winner here. Like the already-announced 4.3-inch version, the prototype is water and dust-resistant, but unfortunately beyond that we only know that it has a dual-core Qualcomm S4 1.5GHz processor.

Update: The rest of the specs are in: a 1280 x 720 screen, 8GB of storage, 8-megapixel camera, and "superfast" charging that can power the phone up halfway in a half hour.

The 4.3-inch version of the Eluga was also on-hand....

HTC One X and One S thickness comparison

2012-02-26T22:05:42Z

One thing that really struck us when we first approached the hands-on area at HTC's press conference today is that it's genuinely difficult to tell the difference between the One X and One S at first blush, particularly if you don't have both of them handy at the same time. Thanks largely to a lower-res AMOLED display, the One S is supposed to be considerably thinner — 1.1 millimeters thinner, to be exact — but in reality, you really need to be looking for the variance. HTC has a long reputation of making thick devices seem thinner than they actually are through creative use of contoured edges (the Sensation, for instance), and the One X's sloped polycarbonate shell seems to pull off the same magic trick.

See another show of the two...

HTC One S pictures, video and hands-on preview

2012-02-26T20:51:52Z

The HTC One S is the best designed phone of the year so far. It measures just 7.6mm in thickness but feels even thinner thanks to its slanted sides and the way the front glass surface slopes off the edges. For a 4.3-inch phone, the One S feels remarkably light and easy to handle. If you think back to the leap HTC made between the Desire HD and Sensation — making its 4.3-inch Android flagship significantly thinner, lighter and more ergonomic — the same delta is apparent between the Sensation and this handset. Part of that is down to the company moving to a Super AMOLED screen with the One S, allowing for a thinner display construction and improving dramatically on the viewing angles and vibrancy of the Sensation. It's not all good...

HTC One S official: 4.3-inch Super AMOLED display, Android 4.0, thinnest HTC phone ever

2012-02-26T20:34:08Z

The long-awaited launch of HTC's next mainstream superstar phone is upon us and its name is the One S. Eschewing the tired motifs that have characterized HTC design over the past year, the 4.3-inch One S looks bold, distinctive, and extremely slim. Its software is right up to date, shipping with Android 4.0 plus added Sense 4.0 skinning, it features a dual-core 1.5GHz processor, and its 8-megapixel camera is the same as on the HTC One X. Combining an f/2.0 lens with a backside-illuminated sensor, it's as close to the cutting edge as the One S' 7.8mm thickness.

Camera performance has been a real priority for HTC with the One series and all three of its newly launched Android handsets come with a selection of important optimizations....