CTIA Wireless Trade Show Photoblog

AT&T kitted out this gorgeous house in New Orleans' Garden District to show off its new home security and home automation system, called "Digital Life." The beauty was marred only by all the journalists.

Intel has a bunch of people dressed in Android costumes wandering around outside the New Orleans Convention Center, which is a little disturbing when you realize that it's ninety degrees out. Laissez le bon temps mouiller!

Another one of the Intel Androids, this one safely inside the air-conditioned convention center.

At HTC's booth, the company had novelty acts to give convention-goers things to shoot with their HTC One series cameras.

No idea.

Announced yesterday for U.S. Cellular, the Pantech Verse is a simple, low-cost texting phone that comes with Pac-Man on board. There's not much in terms of specs here - it has a 2-megapixel camera and will play your MP3s, but that's about it.

There are many, many small phone manufacturers here that may never sell a device in the U.S. Chinese manufacturer Konka, famous for copying Nokia's logo font, has a "high-end" phone in the W900, but its specs would be unimpressive coming from a mainstream manufacturer.

Eyo is another phone maker you probably haven't heard of. Most of these smaller companies make their phones in China from a standard set of parts, and most of them are making mostly dual-SIM texting phones. They get points for the bright colors, though.

Sendtel's colorful phones are even more colorful than Eyo's. They're still dual-SIM texting phones, though, by and large. Sendtel set itself apart by having its whole booth in Spanish - it's really targeting the Latin American market.

I really should.

So, you see how I'm not holding this up to my ear? This is the demo of Kyocera's new tissue-conduction technology, which lets you hear phone calls through your face. It works.

The bubble guy went away, and was replaced by a dancer. I'm of the opinion that any phone company hiring interpretive dancers is really, really pleased with itself and wants to show the world.

Simple Mobile, a prepaid carrier that runs on T-Mobile's network, had a car in their rather industrial-looking booth.

One of the odder corners of the CTIA show are the vendors selling parts of phones. "King Slide" makes slider mechanisms, and then dresses them up with fonts worthy of 1980s men's cologne ads.

This phone maker is named Amgoo. It should probably change its name if it wants to sell phones here.

Nyx Mobile is another lively, small manufacturer at the show. The Twist Connect looks to be based on the 2010 Verizon/Pantech Razzle, a very unusual phone with a swiveling bottom half that can show a keyboard or speaker forward depending on which way it's turned.

At the show's keynote, several wireless carrier CEOs lamented what to do with smartphone users' data demands. The average T-Mobile user is now running 760MB/month, T-Mobile USA CEO Philip Humm said.

The Samsung Galaxy S III, Samsung's new flagship phone, is a large Android phone with a 4.8-inch HD screen and pretty highly customized software. Check out that optional news ticker along the bottom of the lock screen, for instance.

The Kyocera Hydro is Kyocera's new waterproof, entry-level Android 4.0 phone.

The Kyocera Rise trades out the Hydro's water resistance for a four-row, slide-out keyboard.

The new Evo V 4G is a version of the existing Evo 3D phone for Virgin Mobile prepaid customers. The hardware is the same as Sprint's Evo 3D, but it now has a Virgin Mobile theme and software.

The Evo Design 4G is coming to Boost Mobile. This is a popular smartphone we've seen on Sprint, but with a Boost Mobile skin and some Boost Mobile bloatware.

Along with the Overdrive Pro, Virgin is teeing up the U600 modem (at left) for its $55 per month unlimited WiMAX plan.

The new HTC Droid Incredible 4G LTE is Verizon Wireless's answer to the popular HTC One S. Here you see the Incredible 4G, at left with its 4-inch screen, then AT&T's One X with its 4.7-inch panel and T-Mobile's One S with its 4.3-inch screen.

The Incredible 4G runs a version of Google Android 4.0 that's been customized by both HTC and Verizon Wireless, making it a bit more cumbersome than the plain HTC version.

The Samsung Focus 2 is AT&T's new entry-level Windows Phone, running for $49 with contract.