Smartphone sleepers for summer? (photos)

Which new smartphone will be the first big hit of the summer? Click through the slideshow for my quick takes on the early contenders.

Look for this HTC phone to be a strong candidate for smartphone of the season. It's basically the One S now on T-Mobile, but it flies on Verizon's LTE 4G network, and benefits from a lot of goodwill around the Incredible brand. Beats audio, a nice 8-megapixel camera, and Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich provide a nice refresh. It won't be the highest-end phone around, but it will add a fresh face with a familiar name to Verizon's already powerful lineup of Android phones this summer.

Forget new-car smell, the One X has that new-phone look. This HTC Ice Cream Sandwich phone running on AT&T's 4G network looks like it came from the future. Not sure why they wouldn't have removable batteries or SD cards in the future, but those shortcomings are the only real downsides to this fast, powerful, and attractive phone. The phone will cost $199 subsidized and is available now.

If the public buys the hype surrounding the third in the S series and its quad-core processor, this will be the Android phone to hit the road or the beach with this summer. Super AMOLED display, Android 4.0, 8-megapixel camera, 1GB of RAM -- it's all in there. Only problem is the phone isn't actually here yet. The Galaxy S III debuted in London, and we hear it will drop in the United States with 4G LTE sometime this summer.

These days we present and avoid iPhone rumors at our own peril. But with Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference taking place in early June, there's always the chance of an iPhone announcement. Feel free to check the latest from the rumor mill, but it's safe to say that regardless of what new features an iPhone 5 carries, it will sell.

OK, there's admittedly little chance many of these Nokia 808 PureViews will be seen on the streets of American cities this summer -- Nokia's said as much. But it's a fascinating little oddity -- a phone with a huge 41-megapixel camera -- and I wonder if it just might kick off a new trend of photophiles demanding new levels of quality in their cameraphones.

Building on the success of the Transformer tablet, this convertible smartphone slips into a tablet dock, which can also then transform into a tablet. It just seems like the next logical step. So far, though, it has faced nothing but delays and its arrival on these shores is still yet to be announced a year after we first got introduced to the idea. Still, there's hope it -- or a similar concept -- could be the same sleeper surprise the Transformer has turned out to be.