CTIA 2011 wrap-up: Android dominates again

After a hectic fall CTIA show, CES, and Mobile World Congress, we assumed that the spring CTIA show would be a quieter affair. It might have been, too, were it not for AT&T's bombshell, dropped two days before the show kicked off.

News of the proposed merger was followed on Monday by Google joining forces with Sprint to bring Google Voice to nearly every Sprint phone. The announcement went hand in hand with Sprint's news that it's adding an Android 2.3 Gingerbread-run 4G-capable Nexus S to its lineup.

Speaking of Sprint, the carrier unveiled two spinoffs of its Android-powered Evo brand, made by HTC. There was the HTC Evo 3D--which offers a lensless 3D experience for photos, videos, and games--and the HTC Evo View tablet, a rebranded, 4G-ready version of the HTC Flyer we saw at Mobile World Congress.

HTC wasn't the only manufacturer to trot out a 3D phone. LG struck back with its LG Thrill for AT&T, the U.S. version of the LG Optimus 3D first glimpsed in Barcelona, Spain, last month. Like its competitor the Evo 3D, the Thrill features two 5-megapixel cameras on the back for shooting 3D video and stills. LG also had the T-Mobile G2X, our pick for top phone, and yet another rebrand of a dual-core Android phone, the LG Optimus 2X, first revealed at CES. To round off its Optimus theme, Cricket announced the LG Optimus C, the latest in the inexpensive, entry-level Android Optimus line.

Besides the Optimus C, two more Android phones are joining Cricket's lineup, the Samsung Galaxy Indulge and the Huawei Ascend 2.

The Android march continued with the HTC Merge, the phone maker's first CDMA Android world phone, and three new tablets to accompany the HTC Evo View. There's Acer's Iconia Tab A501, a 10-inch, dual-core, 4G-capable Android 3.0 Honeycomb effort. Samsung also rolled out two tablets to join its Tab family, the ultrathin Samsung Galaxy 8.9 and 10.1 tablets, which now come a hair thinner than Apple's iPad 2. Not only do they have much more premium bodies than the first Galaxy Tab, they also sport Samsung's new TouchWiz UX interface to play nice with the Honeycomb OS.

Android devices once again dominated the show, save for the HTC HD7S, a Windows 7 phone that's nearly identical to the HTC HD7 for T-Mobile except for its improved Super LCD screen, and the Nokia Astound, a new Symbian phone for T-Mobile.

For the first time in a long time, BlackBerry had very little presence and announced no new handsets. The one peep we did hear was that the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet will be able to run Android apps. Although the news landed during CTIA, it wasn't brought up until after the show floor had closed.

Take a final trawl through all the other great news, videos, and photos from the week.