Besides the phones from the major carriers and manufacturers, there's always some upstarts at the CTIA 2009 show looking to show off their interesting, out-of-the-box devices. First came Kempler & Strauss, a company we've admittedly never covered, with their inexpensive watchphone. INQ Mobile made the trip from Europe to show us social networking phone. For television addicts, FLO TV, the company behind Verizon Wireless' and AT&T's Mobile TV service, was offering their own device.
Kempler & Strauss W Watchphone might be your first accessory mobile
 Kempler & Strauss came out of left field at CTIA 2009. The company, whose office is local to the San Diego show, was showing off a few devices at the show, including a slim and full-featured watch phone. The Kempler & Strauss W Watchphone uses a GSM radio so you can just slip your SIM card into the phone when you want to use it. The company says it imagines the W Watchphone will be an accessory device, a secondary phone you'll wear when the situation calls for a phone on your wrist. But it's still a full-featured phone, with Outlook contact sync, a side-mounted camera and a multimedia player. The Kempler & Strauss W Watchphone uses stereo Bluetooth for phone calls and music playback, or you can talk directly into the microphone and speaker on your wrist. The W Watchphone even uses microUSB for charging, connecting to your desktop or for an audio jack to connect a headset.
We got a chance to play with the Kempler & Strauss W Watchphone and seemed pretty low-end, for a touchscreen device. To be fair, the company is hoping to sell the device below the $200 mark, which would definitely make it a reasonable accessory phone for buyers looking for the novelty or specific form factor benefits of a watch phone. The screen was not responsive at all, and we had plenty of trouble dialing on the demonstration unit we tried. The menus were tiny, though the phone did recognize some simple gestures for menu selection. The camera was placed in a logical position, but it was still awkward to take pictures and position the viewfinder perfectly. The device would make an excellent spy camera, if the lens weren't somewhat obvious.
With the W Watchphone, Kempler & Strauss are also shipping a stereo Bluetooth headset. The headset can act as a microphone or stereo Bluetooth receiver, and the small Bluetooth device is also shaped to act as a stylus. It's unfortunate that the W Watchphone requires a stylus, but dialing on the tiny screen is too difficult without a sharp tip to focus. Kempler & Strauss haven't announced exact pricing or availability details, but we'll be keeping an eye on this low-cost alternative to LG's GD910 high-end touch sensitive watch phone.
FLO TV is next generation mobile TV on the go, no phone necessary
 At a related CTIA media event, FLO TV was showing off their new portable TV device, the FLO TV Personal Television. FLO TV's mobile TV service has been available for some time in the U.S., but until now it's been sold with carrier branding by AT&T and Verizon Wireless as Mobile TV. There were few developments in the carrier's Mobile TV lineup until recently, when Verizon Wireless launched the high-end V Cast TV capable smartphone, the HTC Imagio, but otherwise not much has been happening for the mobile service. Enter the newly rebranded FLO TV, a subsidiary of Qualcomm, with their own device, the HTC-manufactured FLO TV Personal Television.
In our hands-on look at the FLO Personal TV, the picture quality looked pretty good, but it might not be impressive enough to truly win over an American audience. It's certainly leaps and bounds beyond the streaming video available from carriers on most 3G phones, but it doesn't have the smoothness and sharp picture that viewers have come to expect from portable videos on their iPhones and other portable media players. The schedule lineup is good, and FLO TV is quick to point out that some shows will be available as live, first-run broadcast, including some sporting events. But the lineup seems woefully incomplete.
The device itself was much larger than a cell phone, which offers the benefit of the larger screen, but if this technology can be squeezed into a smartphone, we wonder why the FLO Personal TV couldn't have been much smaller and thinner. Also, the starting price tag and subscription fees are exorbitant, and don't match the quality or selection of content that buyers are getting. If the device were free, we could see paying for a monthly contract hovering around $10/month for a full channel lineup. But asking $250 to start and then requiring long-term contracts seems like a bad plan. What are buyers going to do, jump ship and take the device to another service? The FLO Personal TV only works with the FLO TV service, so it seems unnecessary to lock buyers into a contract if they're paying for the device up front as well.
INQ Mobile
 INQ Mobile has been selling their INQ1 phone abroad for some time now, but at the Fall CTIA 2009 show, the company was showing off their INQ Chat 3G phone. The INQ Chat 3G is meant to be a feature phone with all the best social networking features available on a smartphone, without the complexity or extensibility of a more expensive smart device. The phone works with a sort of widget based interface, and in our hands-on look the main menu screen seemed similar to the Sprint One Click carousel design that we liked on recent phones like the Samsung Reclaim. Into of that Widget bar, INQ builds various tiny apps that access Facebook, Twitter and other social networking services.
Even though INQ is aiming to undercut full-QWERTY smartphones in price, the INQ Chat 3G is surprisingly feature-rich. The phone uses a 3.2-megapixel camera with auto focus. There's a GPS sensor onboard for turn-by-turn navigation. Also, as the name suggests, the INQ Chat 3G uses an HSDPA radio for 3G networking.
INQ is still looking for a carrier partner to sell their phones in the U.S., and with HSDPA it would seem T-Mobile and AT&T are the obvious fit. Both carriers have been making a strong push for less expensive, full-QWERTY phones with a social networking angle, so perhaps we'll see INQ on the U.S. market in the near future.
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