X

CTIA Fall 2010 wrap-up

A brief wrap-up of CTIA Fall 2010.

Nicole Lee Former Editor
Nicole Lee is a senior associate editor for CNET, covering cell phones, Bluetooth headsets, and all things mobile. She's also a fan of comic books, video games, and of course, shiny gadgets.
Nicole Lee
2 min read

Sights from CTIA Fall 2010

See all photos

We admit that we expected CTIA Fall 2010 to be rather slow, as the fall version of the wireless trade show is usually not as eventful as the one in the spring. Boy, were we wrong. More than 10 new devices made their debut this past week, pushing the holiday gadget season into full swing.

Motorola kicked off the festivities with the announcement of five new Android smartphones--three for AT&T and two for Verizon Wireless. They are the Motorola Bravo, the Motorola Flipside, the Motorola Flipout, the Motorola Citrus, and the Motorola Droid Pro. The Motorola Droid Pro is definitely the cream of the crop, and is clearly meant to put RIM on its toes with its strong business-friendly focus. It has a great 3.1-inch HVGA display and a QWERTY keyboard that gave us flashbacks of the BlackBerry Bold. More notably, it is also the first global Android handset, and is able to connect to both CDMA and GSM networks.

A day after AT&T revealed its first LTE devices, Verizon held a press conference where they gave us a taste of its plans for 4G/LTE. The carrier hopes to cover two-thirds of the population with LTE in 18 months, with about 38 markets going live by the end of 2010. Just in time for a Verizon iPhone perhaps?

Not to be outdone, Sprint released three new Android phones--the Samsung Transform, the Sanyo Zio, and the LG Optimus S. All three will be the carrier's first devices to launch with the new Sprint ID user customization service. Sprint ID lets you customize your stock Android OS with a user-selected package of widgets, wallpaper, and apps. Sprint has already partnered up with 13 content partners to provide different ID packs.

The Android onslaught continues with the LG Optimus T for T-Mobile, the Huawei Ascend for Cricket Wireless, and the beautiful Samsung Mesmerize for U.S. Cellular. We also got a peek at the Motorola Defy, the HTC Desire HD, and the HTC MyTouch.

CTIA isn't all about smartphones though. We saw a few new regular phones announced as well. They include the Pantech Laser, the LG Neon II, and the Casio G'zOne Ravine. Motorola also introduced a few Bluetooth accessories, and Jabra showed us the new Wave headset. Things were not all quiet on the app front either. We got a sneak peek at some Windows Phone 7 apps, a shopping app called Aisle411, a Vlingo app that lets you text hands-free, and the Twonky universal remote.

For more CTIA goodness, check out our videos and slideshows from the show.