CES opens with four 4G Android handsets

We knew what to expect heading into this. The 2011 Consumer Electronics Show has gotten underway, and that means our favorite gadget blogs will absolutely destroy our RSS readers. Seriously, I went away for two hours late yesterday afternoon and came home to around 80 new posts on Endgadget. Among the announcements, we knew we’d see plenty of new Android devices. There were a number of tablets, which are worth getting excited over themselves. But perhaps the most significant announcements were the four new 4G smartphones. What’s a bit odd about yesterday’s announcements is that the one handset we expected, the Thunderbolt 4G or whatever they’re going to call it, was not present. You’ll remember that HTC said it would be the first to 4G, again, referring to LTE. But will they really be? They announced a device yesterday, and it is 4G, but it’s HSPA+ for AT&T. Is that what they meant by first to 4G again? (Then again, the teaser said January 6, and it is January 6 currently, but most of the big announcements came yesterday. But we’ll see.) What we got: The Droid Bionic, Motorola’s LTE Android handset for Verizon; the HTC Inspire 4G, AT&T’s HSPA+ Android; Samsung Infuse 4G, AT&T’s next-generation Galaxy S, also HSPA+, and the Motorola Atrix, another HSPA+ handset for AT&T. It’s certainly an exciting lineup, especially for AT&T. They’ve been lagging on Android a bit, so it’s nice to see them picking up an array of powerful, fast devices. For the phones made available, there are a number of hands on experiences strewn about the web. For a quick browse, check out the Motorola Atix and the Droid Bionic, both by Phone Scoop. Sascha Segan of PC Magazine also has a nice hands-on with the Atrix. I’d point you to the Infuse, but apparently AT&T wasn’t letting anyone really touch it. The Inspire was there without a battery, so there’s not much to learn there, either. While the flood of announcements is over, there still figures to be plenty more Android at CES in the next couple of days. Oh, and make sure to check out the Honeycomb video, too:

About the Author

Joe Pawlikowski is the Senior Editor at MobileMoo.com and has been covering the mobile industry full time since 2007. When he's not writing about the tech scene, he can be found discussing his personal love - baseball (and more specifically the New York Yankees) as well as writing on his personal blog.