The 12 Best New Phones You Want

HTC Legend

Why You Want It: It's like an HTC Hero, except with Android 2.1, an OLED screen, and a brushed-to-perfection aluminum body, which may be the most stylistically interesting design choice HTC has ever made.

Alcatel OT980

Why You Want It: It'll be a cheap Android handset in a totally under-recognized form factor. Some may see it as a knockoff of the Pre, but I just see it as a nice little messaging phone, without the restrictions of a dumbphone OS.

Motorola XT800

Why You Want It: It's got the brains of a Droid, without the keyboard. Plus, it's got support for dual SIM cards—a rarity in Android phones—and HDMI output.

General Mobile Touch Stone

Why You Want It: Remember the HTC Touch HD2? The one with the orgasmically beautiful hardware, and categorically disappointing software? This is pretty much that, with Android.

Acer beTouch E110

Why You Want It: When Android phones are available for free on contract, this is what they're going to look like. The specs on this thing are underwhelming, so it might not be accurate to say that you'd want it for you, but you might want it for your tweenage kid.

The Puma Phone

Why You Want It: The first phone designed entirely around a sporting lifestyle. Oh, and it's got a solar panel!

LG GW990

Why You Want It: It's the first phone with Intel's Moorestown chip, and the first with the hybrid Maemo/Moblin OS, called Meego. And seriously, come on with these specs: A 4.8-inch screen at 480 x 1024 pixels? A 1850mAh battery? Intel's Atom-based system-on-a-chip?

Samsung Wave

Why You Want It: Its Bada OS may be underwhelming, but it's a nicely spec'd phone with a couple game-changing features: the first "Super OLED" screen, which doesn't look like ass in direct sunlight. It's also the first handset with USB 3.0, which is, you know, fast.

Toshiba K01

Why You Want It: It's essentially the TG01 with a slide-out keyboard, which makes it the thinnest slide-out-QWERTY smartphone of its kind. (Its kind being massive, massive phones.) It's a proud, final signoff for the entire category of ultraspec'd Windows Mobile 6.x phones.

Sony X10 Mini

Why You Want It: The Xperia X10 done had itself a baby! An adorable little baby! You get the full Sony Ericsson Timeline interface overlaid atop Android, in a much more compact package. And it'll probably be cheap.

Samsung i8520

Why You Want It: Ignore everything else: This phone has a built-in projector. Ha!

Texas Instruments Blaze

Why You Want It: Look! Look at this thing! Two 3.7-inch screens, the OMAP 4 chipset based on the ARM Cortex A9, three cameras, a keyboard—this thing is outright insane.


Sad part to all of the above is some of the above phone may not be even launched in India...