The coveted Best in Show Award wend to Alltel Wireless for their Celltop technology. Celltop will provide customers with an easier way to access, manage and organize information stored in their phones.

Curiously, my two top picks, the HTC Shift and Helio Ocean were both absent from the list of winners. Check out the full list here, and check back for updates on these products as they become available.

You’ll need to head over to the CTIA 2007 gallery to check out the full collection, but I’ve included a few here to give you a taste. You’ll likely see some products that we haven’t written up yet, it’s not that we don’t like them, but there were too many to dedicate full stories to. If you have questions about specific products here, feel free to let us know and we’ll do our best to track down the info for you.

I hope you’ve enjoyed our coverage of this year’s CTIA wireless show. I’ll leave you with a few extra pictures that we had. Don’t forget to check out the full gallery.

For me, my favorite product is a tie. I can’t choose between the Helio Ocean and the HTC Shift. They’re both awesome in their respective categories, so it must remain a tie for me. I will say that the Sound Leaf Bone Conduction Receiver Microphone has to be the winner for strangest new product. It’s really cool, but still very strange.

As for my pick of favorite vendor, I wasn’t there to meet and greet them all, so I can’t go off of their personality. So I’m basing it off of who brought the most, and best stuff to the table. Pantech is the winner in my book. First, they’re the ones that created the Helio Ocean, and that alone is just awesome. Then they bring out all of their concept phones for all to see, very nice. Runner-up for favorite vendor goes to HTC. The Shift and Advantage are just sweet, and then they bring out the very solid Vox and S720.

The award for “best way to cover up a really big mistake” goes to the guys over at UTStarcom. If you hadn’t heard, they accidentally displayed a banner that depicted the Sidekick ID, which was not to be shown. So how does one fix a problem like this? With spray paint of course. Check out the pictures here.

That does it for my favorites. What were your “favorites” from this year’s show?

I won’t go into detail about the individual phones because Pantech was kind enough to place descriptive tags right next to the phones. I will say that the one thing that stands out with almost all of the phones is the screen. Almost every shot that has the screen on is just bright and vibrant.

The only question I have is why Vincent is listening to Justin Timberlake? I really hope that isn’t from his personal collection. I know it’s been a long trip man, but there are better things to listen to than that.

From the pictures it seems that he really took a liking to the C710. He said that he really enjoyed the feel of the phone and the display was very nice to look at.

You can also see in the picture the various faceplates that will be available for the C3b, which is their update to the “world’s smallest phone.” If you’re looking for non-US phones, you’re in luck he snapped a ton of pictures of phones that will be released elsewhere in the world. Check them out here.

The addition of a pedometer doesn’t really seem like a big deal at first. But then if you think about it, pedometers are pretty ugly. No one wants to wear one of those on their hip. Now you get it on your phone, that is also your MP3 player. Nice!

The video really gives you an idea of just how much the buttons glow. Maybe the phone is supposed to double as a flashlight as well? I suppose it could get old to look at after a while, but I still think it looks awesome.

The Supertooth Light is a handsfree speakerphone for your car. It connects to your phone via Bluetooth, so all you need to do is clip it on your sun-visor and you’re ready to go.

The really cool thing about this is that it processes audio in real-time to compensate for background noises. It also detects the level of sound in the area and automatically adjusts its volume accordingly.

Seriously though, he’s been running around all week trying to get his hands on all the latest products for you guys to see. It’s understandable that he might look a little out of it sometimes. I just couldn’t resist putting this picture up. That’s what happens when you have someone else go through and clean up all of your pictures. Anywho, on to the good stuff!

The whole thing was very hush-hush as no videos or pictures were allowed to be taken. So we won’t be able to share any good shots of him playing with it, but he assures us that it feels solid. The only complaint he had with the unit was that the sliding mechanism was difficult to work. HTC assured him that it will not be an issue when the product is released. Unfortunately, HTC declined to comment on some of the big questions such as battery life and screen technology. Perhaps they’re still working on those as well?

We’ve got some good close-up shots of the Shift that depict some of the features that we’re looking forward to.

Here you can see the small touchpad to the side of the screen. It’s not very big, but it’ll get the job done. Also if you look toward the bottom you’ll see what appears to be a biometric scanner. That’ll keep things secure for you.

Also y0u’ll see the USB port, power switch, and what appears to be a card reader.

Not much to see here on the backside. Though it’s nice to see that they included a VGA port so you can see what you’re doing on a larger screen.

Looks like on the left side of the screen we’ve got a Windows key, and the left and right mouse buttons. Below is a better shot of the mouse buttons as well as the built-in webcam.

His initial reaction was that they kick ass. That’s good enough for me, I owned a (HTC) Cingular 8125 for a while and it was the best thing since sliced bread.

They’ve got all the great features that you see in the rest of their sliders. They feel great in your hand, and even though they’re a little thick, they’re not cumbersome to carry around.

The first thing you’ll see is that the buttons on the front glow. We’re not talking about some dinky little lights, this thing really glows. Your keypad is going to slide out the bottom, which allows you to have a larger screen. Which is nice for scrolling through your music collection.

If you’re wondering what’s on the inside, you’ll get a 512MB Memory Stick Micro, which you’re welcome to upgrade. A 2MP camera, Bluetooth, the Sony Ericsson OS and the second-gen Walkman software make for a pretty nice phone. Did I mention that it glows?

Now the big question is just what’s written on that piece of paper? Could it be a secret message? Maybe it contains the official release date of the iPhone! Nah, it’s probably just a bunch of Vincent’s random scribbles. Oh well, one can hope.

The Sound Leaf “Bone Conduction Receiver Microphone” is a great add-on to your existing handset for speaking in loud places, and for people suffering from age-related hearing loss.

It plugs into FOMA phones with flat earphone microphone jacks, and conducts sound vibrations to the auditory nerves through the cranial bones. This is also the first product in the industry that combines a bone-conduction function with a telephone coil (T-Coil) allowing people using hearing aids (with T-Coil) to make clear calls.

Vincent was invited to do just that. As always, he took along his trusty camera and took tons of pictures.

Bear in mind that most of these are in the concept phase and will likely never actually make it to production. They’re still really cool to look at, it gives you an idea of what direction their designers are moving in.

Before:

Credit: Thanks to the guys at Gizmodo for the picture

Someone might want to tell the guys over at the UTStarcom booth. It seems that they put up a banner showing off the Sidekick ID at CTIA this week. Apparently they weren’t supposed to be showing off the ID because sometime after the banner went up it was “fixed” with spraypaint. Vincent got a good picture of it after the new paintjob, but the guys over at Gizmodo managed to snap one before the banner was mutilated.

After:

If you were looking for some good info on the Sidekick ID, Crunchgear got the scoop on it last week. The ID is basically a stripped-down version of Sidekick 3 with such features as Bluetooth, MP3 player, digital camera and the miniSD slot missing.

They were most impressed by the overall design of the phone, its small design makes it easy to tote around, while not feeling too small to talk on. To give you a good size reference they compare it to a first-gen iPod Nano.

As for the not-so-mindblowing specs, you’ll get a nice looking 1.8-inch screen and 2.0 MP camera. You will get the Walkman features and a 1GB Memory Stick Micro to store your music on.

Sony Ericsson w880i Hands-On Gallery [via gizmodo]

Samsung has unveiled a device that they hope will solve this issue for home users that can’t get a cell phone signal. The UbiCell works by hooking into your cable internet connection via Ethernet and provides you with a working signal. That seems like a pretty cool idea.

There’s only one small snag in this great plan. Everyone that I know that lives in an area that doesn’t get a wireless signal has no hope of getting cable internet service this decade. Their odds seem better that someone will build a cell phone tower in their backyard before they get anything better than dial-up internet.

Samsung UbiCell Provides Cell Coverage for Unabomber-Types [via gizmodo]

[via gizmodo]

The HTC Vox and S720 are essentially the same phone, they have minor differences, but the big one is that the Vox is GSM and the S720 is CDMA. This will allow HTC two have two different phones that can work with a variety of carriers.

The phones have standard slide-out QWERTY keyboards that we are used to seeing on HTC phones. They’ll be running Windows mobile 6 when they come out. No word yet on a release date.

HTC Vox and HTC S720 Gallery [via gizmodo]

Here’s a recap of all of the offerings that they had at the show. They had a couple of headsets that weren’t anything to rave about, the S9 which was already know to be coming and an update to the H5 named the H9. They also brought the RAZR maxx Ve which was first seen back in January.

The only truly new item they brought was the ROKR Z6m. No, no iTunes on this ROKR. It will however play music. In all, I’m pretty disappointed in Motorola. There wasn’t really any thing that really stood out of the crowd.

Motorola CTIA Roundup [via gizmodo]

So for the record, this is no longer an issue for me. I’ve recorded a short video for your viewing pleasure (Youtube still processing the video – it should be live shortly).

I’m bumping the Upstage up to 3.5 out 5 stars as a result of this finding.

All around, the phone is just awesome. It fits perfectly into the palm of your hand and the sliding is very smooth. The redesigned UI looks and feels much better than the old one. There are a bunch of new software updates in addition to all of the Helio goodies that you’re used to.

The Ocean sports 3G connectivity which makes everything blazing fast. It also has a dedicated chip for MP3 playback that will get you up to 15 hours of playback. You’ll be able to get your hands on one this Spring for $295.

I just want to know what he’s looking at. It’s like he’s watching something funny that we can’t see. Get back to work Vincent, you’ve got more booths to hit and pictures to take!

video after the jump

The biggest thin you’ll notice right off the bat about the phone is the screen that can be turned to portrait or landscape modes. This of course is to make it easier to watch your favorite TV shows. The TV channels will be provided by Verizon’s VCAST Mobile TV Service.

In addition to a cool screen and the ability to watch TV the VX9400 has got some other great features. 3G marks the top of the list along with Bluetooth and modes such as Music Only and Standalone Modes which essentially turn the phone off leaving you free to watch TV or listen to music in peace.

We’ll get you a hands-on review of the device once Vincent finds a little time to stop playing with all of the other cool phones at CTIA

The big disappointment is that the Upstage is a music phone, yet it lacks the ability to play MP3 ringtones. An oversight perhaps? You can also forget about playing any DRM music on this phone too, so until Steve Jobs convinces the music world to drop DRM altogether, your iTunes songs will just have to stay on your iPod.

The good news is that if you are in need of some fresh tracks, you can download songs both over the air, or from your PC. Although its 64MB of internal memory won’t hold many tracks, the miniSD slot will take cards up to 2GB in size.

The best news of all is the price. Coming in at $149 with a 2-year agreement they’ve really packed in the features for the price.

Unfortunately for Vincent, the Shift was kept behind glass, so he didn’t get to play with it while he was there. He did get to take some nice pictures and capture this short clip for us.

The Shift is HTC’s first UMPC, and so far, it looks great. It has a 7-inch display that looks absolutely stunning, a 30GB hard drive, and a 1.2 Ghz VIA CPU. Expect to get your own hands-on review when these come out in Q3 this year.

Samsung and Sprint have done a great job keeping the Upstage in the price range of $150, considering how featured packed it is. First of all, it’s the first of its kind, a doctor Jekyll and Hyde kinda phone – if you will. On one side is a large screen for watching TV or videos. There a pseudo scroll wheel that doesn’t scroll in the traditional sense. It lacks any tactile feedback and does not rotate, and it’s sensitive to the touch of your finger when you slide your thumb up and down or side ways. So out of the box, don’t expect the Upstage to act and feel like your iPod.

The biggest complaint I have with the Upstage is scrolling through my list of songs; my fingers can only take so many flicks before they get really tired. An average 2GB microSD card will hold up to 400 songs, so if you can imagine, flicking, flicking and more flicking just to get to song number 312. Since the keypad is on the flipside, so don’t count on using it to jump around. The second biggest complaint has to be the menu system. Again, you need to do a lot flicking around to get around. Samsung tease us with numbers on the left hand side, but there’s no way to easily select via pressing the dial pad.

Ok, so I’ve vented; now on to the good stuff. At first glance, it’s a beautiful handset and sexy in everyway. The sound quality from the internal speaker is as good can be, in a quiet setting. The screen size is adequately large enough to watch short clips. It’s thin and very light weight. Similar to the iPod, there’s a hardware lock button. There’s one minor inconvenience that I didn’t mention above is the “flip button”. You need to press it in order to flip from one side to the other. This requires a little bit of getting use to. But after a few dozen or so times, it becomes second nature.

Side loading music via the microSD slot is a nice feature – which saves you a bundle of cash if you already have a large collection of music. The only catch is – the system MUST reload all your music every time you want to view your entire list of songs. This took around 2 or 3 seconds for 205 songs. Again, don’t expect the Upstage to act and feel like the iPod. Keep your expectations in check or you’ll be sorely disappointed.

I didn’t have any problems pairing the Upstage with my Bluetooth ety8 Stereo Wireless Headset. However, when attempting to connect, it never connects. I’ll need to look into this later.

I give the Sprint Upstage 3/5 stars, based on the rough hands on experience. Perhaps I’ll be more inspired to write a more detailed review after the event.

Ok, I need to run and see other cool stuff here at CTIA Wireless.

NOTE: I called the Upstage, “Upstart” in the video. Oops.

Make sure to check out the CTIA Wireless Image gallery for more images throughout the show.

There have been a few rugged phones before, and many more pseudo-rugged who used lashings of rubber and “extreme” case stylings to give an impression of hardiness, but they’ve often been under-spec’d and just plain ugly. Sprint have obviously heard the plaintive cries of the clumsy and the dangerous, and so today they’re launching the Vision Phone SCP-7050; not only is it built to military specification 810F (which means it can withstand shock, vibration and dust) but it has onboard GPS and access to the Sprint Vision service of, amongst other things, internet access and email.

First things first: it’s actually a pretty good looking handset. Made by Sanyo, it’s obviously not going to be as skinny as a RAZR or have the easily-scratched mirror finish from LG’s Shine, but the rubberised coating is pleasant to hold and means the phone generally stays where you put it (even if that’s on a dashboard). It feels incredibly well put together, with a solid, sturdy hinge mechanism and tactile, well-delineated keys.

That GPS capability means business applications such as AirClic MP, Comet Tracker by ActSoft Inc., TeleNavtrack and Xora GPS Time Track – all of which use satelite tracking to monitor productivity – can be used, even when the phone is out of Sprint’s CDMA coverage. Should the unthinkable happen and you accidentally drop the handset down an open sewer pipe, wireless contact backup means you can quickly restore your phonebook to a new 7050.

Bluetooth, which can be used to tether the Vision to a laptop and use it as a modem, 4.4hrs talktime and built-in speakerphone round out the specs; the SCP-7050 is available for around $299, or $149 with a two-year contract. It’s probably not going to appeal to the same people who flock to the Shine, say, but anyone in the market for a durable and well-featured cellphone should really take a look at the 7050.

You can check out our full unboxing gallery of the Sprint Vision SCP-7050 here.

Sprint

more pictures after the jump

The LG VX9400 has a lot of features packed into a small space. The biggest feature has to be the ability to watch your favorite TV shows right on your phone. The screen even swivels around to make viewing your shows even easier.

The LG570 is a nice looking phone that has a simple one-touch access key for playing your favorite MP3′s. With a microSD slot you can be sure that you’ll always have plenty of fresh tunes to listen to. You’ll even be able set the phone to only play music, effectively shutting off the phone while you’re rocking out.

It looks like it will be packed with features including WiFi, Bluetooth, built-in GPS, and 3G connectivity. You’ll have 8GB of storage space, 256MB of flash memory, 128MB of RAM and a miniSD card slot for expansion. All of this is powered by WM6 and can be viewed on a 5-inch VGA touch screen.

An interesting note is that HTC is releasing its latest products under their own HTC name. Prior to this they would have their products branded by carriers such as Cingular.

More pics after the jump
In case you hadn’t heard already, you’ll get 3G connectivity, Bluetooth 2.0 and WiFi to keep your connected. A 30GB HDD will provide more than enough space, and the little guy is powered by a 1.2Ghz VIA CPU. Not too shabby.

The 7-inch screen looks absolutely stunning. If that’s not big enough for your larger tasks, they even throw in a VGA connector so you can hook it up to a standard monitor. I can’t wait to get my hands on one.

First up we’ll look at the Pantech C3b which is an update to their “world’s smallest camera flip phone.” It has a few new features including Bluetooth and changeable color faceplates. You’ll also see mobile email, a VGA camera with flash and 4x digital zoom, an instant messaging client, and even a flashlight. All of this is crammed into a tiny 69 x 43 x 20.3mm package.

Their next offering targets the music lovers out there. Many phones have MP3 players built-in, but C510 goes a step further and makes the phone feel like a traditional MP3 player. The controls on the outside with a scrolling display to show you what you’re listening to. You’ll be able to store about 500 songs on the phone’s internal memory, or add your own Micro SD card and hold even more. You’ll also see other standard features such as Bluetooth and a 1.3 megapixel camera that takes both stills and video

If you like candybar phones, then the C150 might just be for you. The phone won’t come with a lot of the flashy extras that some of their other phones have. But for being a minimalist phone, you’ll still get a lot of the functions you want in a phone such as Bluetooth, MP3 ringtones, and a VGA camera.

The C600 is one of two new 3G phones that Pantech is releasing. It will take advantage of the high-speed internet connection with the installed Yahoo Mobile experience software. You’ll also get Bluetooth Stereo, and a VGA camera.

The final phone is also 3G capable. The C710 is also equipped with Push-to-Talk as well as deluxe speakers, Bluetooth stereo, a 1.3 megapixel camera and Video Sharing Client. All of this is powered by a Flash UI and viewed on a large, vibrant display screen.

We’ll hopefully be able to get some hands-on time with some of these during our coverage of the CTIA Wireless show this week. We’ll be sure to get you more details when we do. Expect to see these released this summer, except for the C3b which we could see as early as this Spring.

• Guess what comes out today? Helio Ocean
• Helio Ocean hands-on review
• Helio Ocean Review: Come back at 11PM PST
• Helio Ocean Unboxing Video and Initial Impression

First things first: sod the iPhone. Yeah, you read right, forget about it. Stop saving 10-percent of your pay-packet every month, don’t sign 18 to 24 months of your life away to Cingular, think laterally, not with the crowd. Helio have just blown everyone out of the water, and ironically they’ve done it with the Ocean.

Dual-slide for both number pad and full QWERTY. 3G for screaming downloads. Two-megapixel camera with flash, GPS, full HTML browser, 2.4-inch 260k colour QVGA display, on-board stereo speakers, 200MB of internal memory and microSD for more than 2GB more, USB Mass Storage Mode with PC and Mac compatibility… I’m throwing all this out in one fat chunk because if I were to talk you through it we’d be here all day.

And a fat chunk it certainly isn’t: at 4.33 x 2.2 x .86 inches it’s smaller in all dimensions than the Sidekick 3, as well as being lighter at just 5.61oz. It takes all the usual Helio goodies like instant messaging from Windows Live, Yahoo! and AIM, made super-simple thanks to the full keyboard, then adds out-of-the-box support for AOL, Hotmail, Gmail, EarthLink and Yahoo! Mail, Helio’s own email service of course, and Microsoft Exchange for push-email. Extra accounts can be added thanks to custom POP and IMAP profiles.

GPS-reliant features like Buddy Beacon and Google Maps are joined by the new Helio UP service, a way of easily tagging photos with title, description, keywords and geographical location before uploading them to the online Helio Album. Alternatively Helio’s tight MySpace integration means adding pictures to your profile is as straightforward as navigating those of your friends in either the browser, thanks to the Mini Map and page optimisation, or the MySpace on Helio v2 app.

A dedicated chip for handling music playback means you can eke fifteen hours of continuous audio from the media player, and of course there’s support for your own tunes and those bought from Helio Music. If you’re already signed up to an all-you-can-eat PlaysForSure subscription service like Yahoo! or Napster then you’ll be pleased to hear Ocean can play those tracks too. Stereo Bluetooth means you can cut the cord and enjoy your music wirelessly, and downloading fresh material is fast thanks to Ev-do.

So far, so awesome; but all those features aren’t worth a soapy trout if the interface isn’t up to scratch. Thankfully Helio have completely rejigged the UI to suit both portrait and landscape orientations of the new display, and preliminary feedback from our oh-so-fussy sources tell us that it’s every bit as user-friendly as you’d hope. Integration between apps is tighter than the North Korean border, with contact lists tied into each of the IM services for “presence detection” and instant address book search direct from the idle screen.

Traditionally convoluted web-searching is made indecently simple; flick out the keyboard and start typing, direct from the idle screen. Ocean automatically searches Yahoo!, Google, Wikipedia and any other provider you choose, serving results up in a tabbed interface together with local results tied into your GPS location. Meanwhile, the single messaging hub brings together email, SMS, MMS and IM in one dashboard, and Ocean is clever enough to automatically decide on message format depending on recipient and whether pictures or video are attached. Support for multi-tasking means you can still browse the net while listening to music, and with up to 5.1hrs talk-time it doesn’t fall short when it comes to basic phone duties either.

It’s an awesome handset, and you can well believe it when Helio say that not only is Ocean the device the company was born to offer, but that it was in development even before the company was founded. If there’s still a part of you hankering after the iPhone, then maybe the price will convince you otherwise; Ocean will drop this coming Spring with a MRSP of $295. Honestly, I’m considering emigrating to the US just to sign a cellphone contract.

Rest assured that SlashGear will bring you a full hands-on report just as soon as demo models are available.

CTIA Wireless 2007