Best new smartphones at CES 2009

CELL PHONES

» Coming soon
» Top 15
» Best-rated

LAPTOPS

» Coming soon
» Top 15
» Best-rated

CAMERAS

» Coming soon
» Top 15
» Best-rated

REVIEWS

» Cell phones
» Cameras
» Camcorders

» Archive	» Resource Center
» Compare	» Expert guides
» RSS & Alerts	» Ask The Editors

	Home / Cell phones / Multimedia smartphones / CES 2009

	Best new smartphones at CES 2009	By Philip Berne, 10 January 2009

Only the future matters when it comes to smartphones, and Palm unveiled its big step in that direction at CES 2009. Check out the Palm Pre and more inside.

Palm Pre next-gen smartphone

The Palm Pre goes well beyond updating the stale Palm OS platform, and brings an entirely new interface and hardware paradigm in the form of the Palm WebOS. The WebOS is a jewel of a touchscreen interface, and it includes some interesting synchronization options to allow users to seamlessly navigate between corporate mail, personal e-mail on Google as well as social networking on Facebook. The Palm Pre hardware itself packs all the high-end features you'd expect from a modern smartphone, all in a slim, rounded design. Full preview...

Pharos Traveler 137

Pharos is trying even harder these days to win an audience for their Windows Mobile-based, GPS smartphones. We reviewed Pharos' first effort, the Pharos 600, a couple years back, and found it performed well with GPS duties, but needed a lot of work in the interface department. Now, Pharos has worked with Windows Mobile specialists SPB to design a modern-looking update to the Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional OS. It doesn't have all the clever tricks of an HTC design, but it's much more effective than the standard WinMo UI. Full preview...

Motorola MotoSurf A3100

Motorola tosses their hat into the ring of manufacturers improving upon Windows Mobile with an improved, custom interface design. The Motorola MOTOSURF A3100 is a 2.8-inch touchscreen up top with a trackball on the bottom, which seems like an interesting combo to us. The device comes with a stylus, but that new Motorola menu system begs to be touched. It uses a carousel of icons that swim by on the bottom, but in the hands-on demo we saw of this device, those icons seemed to be swimming upstream. Hopefully, Motorola will work on improving the performance of the UI with the touchscreen before launch. In any case, we thought the phone's onscreen keyboard was nice, if a bit small, but we're mainly curious as to how far the interface tweaks have gone. As is always the case with these modified WinMo phones, the deeper you dig, the more likely you are to hit dirt.

BlackBerry Curve 8900

Arguably the most important new phone in T-Mobile's CES 2009 lineup is the RIM BlackBerry Curve 8900. Some may scoff and say we've seen much better from RIM this year. The Curve 8900 has the newest version of the BlackBerry OS, so it looks very much like a smaller version of the RIM BlackBerry Bold 9000. But as much as we liked that high-end device, remember that the Curve is not only the best selling BlackBerry, it's one of the best selling phones period, and the BlackBerry Curve 8900 is a sleek, modern update to an already wildly popular smartphone. Plus, it gets access to T-Mobile's unlimited HotSpot calling plan using UMA over Wi-Fi. This phone isn't the top of the line for RIM, but we're sure it will be a huge seller when released in February.

T-Mobile Shadow "2"

The T-Mobile Shadow gets more of a spit-shine than an overhaul in the newest edition of the device, and this starts a trend in T-Mobile's CES lineup. In fact, the second T-Mobile Shadow doesn't even get a new name, it's still the T-Mobile Shadow. That's probably for the best, because when we saw the device here in Las Vegas, we would have had to hold up the former Shadow to its newer self to see the difference. It keeps the SureType keyboard that we've always liked, as well as HTC's offshoot Neo user interface, another way HTC is making Windows Mobile easier for the masses. The T-Mobile Shadow is not a touchscreen phone, and we're glad T-Mobile didn't feel compelled to add the feature. The phone works fine without a touchscreen. Now, 3G networking? That's something we might not be able to live without.

T-Mobile Dash in Black

The subtitle says it all for this one. The T-Mobile Dash is now available in black. We never liked the silver front, anyway, and we definitely prefer the black finish. It was a solid, if underpowered, smartphone when we reviewed it back in 2006. Now it comes in black, running the Windows Mobile 6.1 OS. For non-touchscreen phones, WinMo 6.1 provides some nice improvements, with a tabbed design on the Today screen that is easier to navigate. Still, again we can't help but wish for 3G support, and perhaps GPS, and a host of other improvements we've been waiting for since the phone's launch more than 2 years ago.