CES 2012 Preview: Cell Phones

Hold your horses. Every phone you see rumored on the Internet will not appear at CES. That's because unlike February's Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, CES is a U.S. trade show where the wireless carriers still rule, and the carriers may remember what happened last year.

To recap: Back at CES 2011, Verizon made a huge splash with its first 4G LTE phones. The most anticipated one was the . That phone took nine months and a radical hardware change to make it to market, and it was quickly eclipsed by the . So will the carriers be a little more circumspect this time, or will they get drawn into partying? We'll see.

The key overall trends we'll see on the high end will be Android 4.0 "", 720p screens, and 4G LTE. I'll be happy if 3D phones go the way of projector-phones, back into the realm of momentary fads.

What to Expect From Carriers
The collapse of the AT&T/T-Mobile merger, and Verizon's new deal with several cable companies, are major wild cards at the show. Remember that the was a huge surprise at last year's CTIA show, in March.

AT&T's holding a two-hour-long press conference where they're sure to unveil a post-merger LTE buildout strategy. Will they stick to their plan of only covering 80 percent of the country with LTE? T-Mobile hasn't planned a press conference yet, but they'll be having meetings to explain what they're doing with their juicy $4 billion breakup package from Big Blue.

We're also sure to see new phones from AT&T, although I don't know about T-Mobile. At least one of the new AT&T devices will probably be a Nokia Lumia Windows phone. BGR predicts an LTE Windows phone from HTC.

to support LTE. That would match up well with BGR's report, and one of the AT&T Nokia phones might also support that carrier's LTE network.

Sprint is throwing an event, too. A powerful HTC phone—maybe one of HTC's first quad-core phones—could help calm the worries around Sprint's upcoming transition from WiMAX to LTE for its 4G network.

I haven't heard of much from Verizon Wireless, which may decide to coast on the for at least a few weeks. They don't have a press conference scheduled, and they're only sending out meeting requests for—yawn—"enterprise solutions."

How About the Manufacturers?
Sony Ericsson aims to rebrand itself as Sony, and is holding a bewildering array of press events and announcements. The first Sony-branded phones are more likely to come at February's MWC than at CES, but we'll get a closer look into Sony's transition at this show.

Will Motorola's purchase by Google actually result in some interesting fruit at CES? The While Moto is sure to bring some Android 4.0-powered phones to CES, the bigger issue will be whether they can leverage their new position as a subsidiary of Google to get privileged access to new Android features.

Major Chinese phone makers Huawei and ZTE are both trying to get more respect in the U.S. market, so they may roll out high-end phones at the show. Huawei's having a press conference. We could see something from HTC as well, although that announcement will likely be driven by a carrier.

Samsung is likely to save its Galaxy S III for Mobile World Congress in February; ditto LG for the latest chapter in its Optimus line. While CES is sure to bring some appetizingly tasty handheld devices, I suspect the main courses will be served up later, at mobile-only MWC.