CTIA 2008 Photo Blog

By far the coolest phone at the ShowStoppers event before CTIA, the Samsung F480 has a 5-megapixel camera, a touch screen, and a very good-looking interface. It's not scheduled for a US release, of course.

The Samsung F480's home screen consists of 'widgets' that you can drag around at will. I think the cupcake is a birthday alert.

At the CTIA E-Tech awards, it turned out that a few of the products short-listed for awards hadn't been approved by their carriers yet. Whoops. Break out the electrical tape!

Motorola's DH02 is a touch-screen combination mobile TV and navigation device that's destined for sale in Europe. Because it uses the DVB-H broadcast system, which has been rejected by American firms, it's unlikely to ever go on sale here.

The Linux firm Trolltech was recently purchased by Nokia. But nobody took away their table at ShowStoppers; instead, it sat forlorn.

The prepaid wireless carrier Kajeet brought their phones to ShowStoppers. Kajeet is targeted at tweens and teens, and now offers a GPS service so parents can locate the phones. Kajeet is the only prepaid carrier to offer GPS location; Verizon and Sprint offer it on their postpaid service.

The upcoming update of Internet Explorer Mobile renders pages a lot better than the old version did. Here's what Facebook looks like on the new IE on a Windows Mobile Professional device ...

... and what British Airways' Web site looks like on the new IE on Windows Mobile Professional. The old IE Mobile would have mangled that table. We'll have to wait a few months for the new version to come out, though.

This nice lady offered to take a picture of me, on her motorcycle. I said that probably wasn't what my readers wanted to see.

At Cellatel's booth, they had several phones bizarrely co-branded with The Sharper Image. The 909TSI is a quad-band GSM phone with a 2-megapixel camera.

Cellatel also had a QWERTY smart phone with the Sharper Image brandingm a quad-band GSM model with a 2-megapixel camera and 320x240 touch screen running Windows Mobile 6.

LG's enV2 has the most customizable interface seen on a Verizon phone since the old Motorola E815. You can actually change the icons on the home screen - with considerable limits, but that's a huge step forward for Verizon. Also note how "Get It Now" is now the more comprehensible "Media Center."

MediaFLO was the mobile TV system of the moment at CTIA, but LG was demoing their MPH system, which may also start appearing on phones within a few years.

The limited edition gold Iron Man LG Shine has a back that's pure 18-karat gold. You're looking at a $2000 phone there.

AT&T demonstrated their Microsoft Surface sales solution, which will be installed in AT&T stores this month. It lets you put phones down on the table and automatically see their specs and plan options.

Check this out! You can't break the antenna on the new LG Vu. It's long, but wow, is it bendy. It snapped right back into place when I let it go.

Good news for Nextellers: the upcoming Motorola V950, one of Sprint's first QChat phones, has the best of both the Nextel i580 and the Nextel i880. That is to say, it's going to be milspec-rugged, water-resistant, and incredibly loud, and yet have a 2-megapixel camera and high-res screen. This will be the push-to-talk phone to beat.

Come on, Tony Stark would admit that his defense-contractor status would earn that appellation. This Iron Man suit was on display at the LG booth.

Two of the finalists for the Playboy Mobile award pose at the Palms.

Two of the potential winners of Miss Playboy Mobile wait to be called.

Rachel, one of the finalists for Miss Playboy Mobile, shows off the round bed in the Hugh Hefner Suite at the Palms.

The Playboy Mobile party was held at the Hugh Hefner suite at the Palms, which rents for $40,000 a night and has a balcony overlooking the Las Vegas Strip.

The Playboy Mobile party at the Palms moved to the pool; a dedicated crew of Playmates took to the water, leaving the awards finalists on land.

The nine finalists for Miss Playboy Mobile line up at the Playboy Mobile party at CTIA.

Nokia's N96 smart phone has an interesting dual-LED flash that's brighter than a standard LED flash, but isn't as bright as the xenon flash on the Nokia N82 - or as bright as the flash on a real digital camera.

Nokia showed off their N96 smart phone at the CTIA Wireless trade show. The N96 features a 5-megapixel camera and GPS mapping capability.

Nokia's Remade concept phone is a luxurious-feeling cell phone that's entirely made of low-end recycled materials. The metal exterior comes from soda cans.

Inside the Remade concept phone, the rubber comes from car tires and the plastic comes from soda bottles.

Nokia also showed off some of their new CDMA phones, part of an attempt to gain share in the US marketplace. This basic 1606 model appears to be destined for MetroPCS, though Nokia wouldn't confirm that.

The new Nokia CDMA phones have an interface that's very similar to Nokia's Series 40, but it's actually running on a different chipset than their S40 phones. The "@metro" icon is a MetroPCS data service.

Here's a fun feature on the Nokia 1606: a bright flashlight that shines out of the hinge!

The Samsung Access is one of the first two AT&T Mobile TV phones. It comes with nine channels of mobile TV right now, including an all-movies channel from Sony called PIX.

While we were watching PIX, The Karate Kid was playing.

AT&T Mobile TV subscribers have two phone choices. The Samsung Access has more of a traditional phone form factor. The all-touch-screen LG Vu, shown here, has a larger screen for mobile TV viewing.

At the show, Sanyo announced the shiny Katana LX, the latest addition to their Katana line for Sprint. The LX has a VGA camera, Bluetooth and GPS, but no high-speed data.

Waterproof phones in the US look big and clunky. In Japan, though, they're sleek and pack 5-megapixel cameras, like this model from Casio.

UT Starcom's bizarre UM185, made by Toshiba, is an MP3 player, a high-speed modem dongle for your PC, and also a phone with a truly strange keypad. If any carrier decides to risk it, it works on CDMA networks like Sprint's and Verizon's.

Cricket's $40 unlimited high-speed Internet access has been getting a lot of buzz. This UM100C modem from UT Starcom lets Cricket users hook up anything with a USB port, including desktop PCs, to Cricket's high-speed data system.

While Motorola burns? Oh no, sorry, Moto, we love you. But Sony Ericsson almost always has music in their booth; today it was a bizarre combination of an electric fiddler and a DJ, playing Gorillaz songs.

Sony Ericsson was showing their Xperia X1 Windows Mobile phone, which has an unusual interface that lets you flip between nine minimized 'panel' screens.

Here's an unusually cool application on the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1. Each of these fish represents the status of your phone. The gray one is the volume fish - gray means it's muted. The black fish shows that the phone is running low on battery.

Hey, it wouldn't be a trade show without 'em.

Verizon and Sprint both released the Blackberry Curve at the CTIA show, but as always, the two models have very different applications builds. Verizon's Curve has the basic stuff.

Notice the additional icons on Sprint's Blackberry curve for Sprint's music and streaming TV stores (top, fourth from left) and instant messaging (second row, second from left) compared to the Verizon version of the phone.

Nokia strapped 20 people into chairs and dangled them 180 feet in the sky to supposedly demo WiMAX on the new Nokia 810 WiMax Edition internet tablet. But when the adventurers got up to their height, they found there was no WiMax to be had - the tablets were running on Wi-FI. Whoops!

The Playboy Phone is quite slender, and it slips easily into even very tight pants.

The Playboy Phone comes in a more masculine gold color and a more feminine pink hue.

Yes, the Playboy Phone has features, including an MP3 player and 1.3 megapixel camera.

Alcatel and Cellatel decided to show off their new line of fashion phones with a fashion show featuring scantily clad models and the occasional Playboy Bunny.

Alcatel and Cellatel decided to show off their new line of fashion phones with a fashion show featuring scantily clad models and the occasional Playboy Bunny.

Alcatel and Cellatel decided to show off their new line of fashion phones with a fashion show featuring scantily clad models and the occasional Playboy Bunny.