While most manufacturers will be saving their big phone launches until Mobile World Congress in February, several new smartphones have been been spotted on the plush Vegas carpets.
Having absorbed Ericsson into the Sony hive mind, the newest Xperia handsets are the first to break cover without any Ericsson branding.
The Sony Xperia S (pictured above) is essentially a Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc with HD - a 4.3-inch Reality Display (1,280 x 700 pixels), a 12MP camera and the promise of an Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade in Q2.
You can also say hello to the new Sony Xperia Ion, a PlayStation-certified, dual-core (1.5GHz) smartphone with 16GB of internal storage and a 12MP rear camera.
Elsewhere, HTC has upgraded the Titan for duty on AT&T. The HTC Titan II is the same 4.7-inch, 1.5GHz Windows Phone that you might be indifferent to. But it's been souped up with a 16MP snapper, wide angle lens, dual LED flash and LTE support.
The US also gets the Nokia Lumia 800 dressed up as the Nokia Lumia 900. What's new? It's LTE-powered, larger screened (4.3 inches) and has a better front camera.
The LG Spectrum also catches the eye with a 4.5-inch IPS LCD that rivals the Retina display on the iPhone 4. While the the Huawei Ascend P1 S and Ascend P1 trumpet Super AMOLED screens and the thinnest chassis on the market. It's only 6.68mm thick.
Intel has regularly missed the boat when it comes to mobile, but that doesn't stop it trying to catch up. The chip colossus has used this year's CES to publish its reference design for smartphones, which stipulates a minimum spec for any manufacturer who wants to use its Atom chips.
Need an example? You're in luck. Lenovo has partnered with Intel to produce the Lenovo K800, an Android-powered Atom-phone with a 720p 4.5-inch display, 8MP camera, NFC and HDMI. It's good. And quite noticeably zippy. But Intel will need better phones than this to establish Atom as a credible mobile CPU.
The future of mobiles in 2012 arguably lies with quad-core handsets like Fujitsu's 1.2GHz Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core super phone prototype. Is it 'super'? Really? The inclusion of Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), a 1,280x720 4.6-inch TFT LCD, 13.1MP rear-facing camera and 4GB of RAM would suggest a big, fat "hell, yeah!"
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