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The 5 Best Phones at MWC 2012

In a crowded sea of new smartphones announced at Mobile World Congress, these five are the standouts.

February 29, 2012

As MWC wraps up, one thing is certain: With all of the announcements, there's no shortage of impressive smartphones on the horizon for 2012. And while the official theme of the show this year is 'Redefining Mobile,' the unofficial theme became clear early on: More is more.

We saw a bevy of handsets powered by ridiculously fast quad-core processors. That's a big leap from last year, when dual-core still seemed novel. And with chip manufacturers out in full force at the show, it's no longer only about the phone makers. We saw impressive quad-core chips from Nvidia and Qualcomm, along with a left field entry from . We even managed to get some , the first of Qualcomm's new Series 4 (S4) chips.

If quad-core power isn't enough for you, how about a gargantuan display? The old 4.3-inch standard for large screens is starting to feel tiny, especially with all the 4.7- and 5-inch behemoths on display this year. And it's not just size that matters, but resolution too. Nearly all of the high-end phones we saw at the show are packing gorgeous HD screens.

And let's not leave Google out of the mix. From its veritable funhouse of a show floor booth to the fact that nearly every major phone we saw is running Android, Google was dominant at MWC this year. Google's senior vice president of mobile, Andy Rubin, pronounced that Android activations have topped 850,000 per day. And when you factor in all the Android tablets, Google pretty much owned this show.

Then there are the oddballs. Like a Symbian-based Nokia cameraphone packing 41 megapixels of photo-snapping power. Or the return of the projector phone from Samsung. Yes, we certainly saw a lot of cool stuff at MWC this year. So without further ado, here are our picks for the five most significant smartphones of MWC 2012.

Also, be sure to check out or picks for the .

 

#1: HTC One X
Quad-core Android phones and high-quality camera phones are two major themes at this year's MWC, and the HTC One X brings those two concepts together elegantly. Rather than just blowing out specs, HTC is focusing on finish, feel, and quality, from the eye-popping Super LCD 2 screen to the mega-fast HDR camera enabled by a new image chip. The One X even uses both flagship processors shown off at the show—Nvidia's Tegra 3 in most countries, and Qualcomm's S4 in its AT&T version. It can be a bit too large for some with its 4.7-inch screen, but we think it just might be Android's hero product of the year.

 

#2: Nokia PureView 808
It's rare that you see a surprise, brand-new technology  cameraphone is blowing everyone away. The huge sensor lets you zoom after the fact, enables gorgeous, noise-free images at lower resolutions, and essentially kills the megapixel race. The only reason this phone isn't our top pick: it's running the zombified Symbian operating system.

 

#3: Sony Xperia P
Sony seems to be the only Android vendor at this show focusing on design as much as HTC is. The Xperia P's clear plastic bar and rounded back make it look unlike other Android phones, and its White Magic display makes for truly stunning brightness. White Magic uses four subpixels for each pixel rather than the usual three; the fourth one is white. That makes the screen's whites extremely bright, and saves power all around because you only have to light one subpixel rather than three for white areas.

 

#4: Samsung Galaxy Beam
The projector phone is back! And it actually looks usable this time. The Samsung Galaxy Beam brings a unique feature to a slim, attractive Android phone. The projector up top beams a 15-lumen image out the front onto whatever surface you can find. It's not thick, at 12.5mm, and the lens doesn't get in the way of slipping the phone into your pocket. The projector has 640-by-360 resolution, which is a 720p video reduced by half.

 

 

#5: Orange* phone
Europe's first Intel-powered Android phone, the Orange* phone could herald a major shift in the entire smartphone market. Is the dominance of ARM processors coming to an end? Right now we're seeing the same kind of features on ARM-based phones as we did on the Orange*. But Intel, of course, is promising to do them better, faster, and cooler. Will it work? This phone's success or failure will help tell the tale.

 



For more, see the MWC photo gallery below, and our complete .