This year's CTIA mobile conference showed the focus of the industry for 2010: Android smartphones and 4G networks. Two top-of-the-line Android phones debuted, and three of the four major carriers announced major plans for expansion of high-speed, next-generation 4G wireless networks.

Dell announced their very first smartphone destined for the American market, the Aero. The Aero, a form of which was released in China under the name Mini 3i, will be AT&T's second Android phone, after the Motorola Backflip. Physically, the Aero claims the questionably-useful honor of "world's lightest Android phone," and will have a 3.5-inch screen and a 5MP camera, though no physical keyboard.

Its software is the most interesting feature--it's a heavily customized version of Android 1.5 (though Dell assures us it'll see an upgrade to the less-antiquated Android 2.1 very soon), which integrates with social networking and cloud-based services like Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Picasa, and YouTube. Price and release date have not been disclosed as of the end of CTIA.

Samsung's Galaxy S smartphone is the second-biggest news of the entire convention, after HTC's minor revolution with its Evo 4G. The Galaxy S is damned impressive in its own right: it's running a heavily modified version of Android 2.1, packs a 5MP camera, 720p video playback (and output), a 1GHz processor (presumably a Qualcomm Snapdragon, like the Google Nexus One and Evo 4G), and offers 16GB of internal storage. The Galaxy S's screen is also a new technology; Samsung calls it "Super AMOLED," and claims it is 20% brighter, 80% less reflective, and 20% more battery-efficient than typical AMOLEDs.

But it's also taking a sharp left turn with software. The Galaxy S offers another totally new Android skin, looking a bit like a cross between HTC's Sense and the iPhone OS. They're pushing new, experimental software like Swype's alternative keyboard (which lets you type by swiping your finger from letter to letter without lifting it off the keyboard) and Layar's augmented reality browser. The Galaxy S will also feature TV shows, movies, and books from Samsung's new content partners--it's unclear how any of this stuff will work, but Samsung seems pretty thrilled about it.

The worrisome aspect? Samsung has a godawful track record with mobile interfaces. Gizmodo called its first Android attempt, the Behold II, "the most impressively ugly Android phone in existence" and ranked it as the very first custom Android interface that's worse than the standard one. But the hardware on the Galaxy S is really great, and if Samsung can corral their engineers into making a cohesive product, they could have a real hit on their hands.

Interestingly, the Galaxy S has no price, release date, or even a carrier named yet.

The HTC Evo 4G is the new Android champ. It's the first 4G phone of any kind on the market, and even without that, it's got the best hardware (with a crazy good 4.3-inch screen, mobile hotspot capabilities, and HDMI-out) and the best software (it runs HTC's vaunted Sense UI) of any Android phone out there. As we said in our announcement:

This is the best Android phone yet, and a big step for Sprint, who needed exactly this kind of flashy, eye-catching, and damned impressive phone to show off their mostly-unused 4G network. It's not a revolution like Windows Phone Series 7, but simply one big step forward for Android--and Sprint as well.

The HTC Evo 4G will be available at an undetermined date this summer, and pricing has not yet been announced.

Motorola's i1 is...different. It's a military-specced handset, so it doesn't really matter that its hardware and software are both straight out of 2008 (I know, right?), because you can literally play shuffleboard with it. It is the first push-to-talk Android phone, and despite its telltale green and blue theme, the i1 doesn't actually come with Motorola's Blur social-networking-focused skin. It's just got vanilla Android 1.5, which is outdated enough as is. The i1 will come with Opera Mini as its standard browser, which is unusual but not necessarily that interesting.

Release date and price have not been announced for the Sprint-bound i1.

SanDisk announced their newest, biggest flash storage at CTIA: a 32GB microSDHC card. Most Android phones (as well as BlackBerry and Windows Mobile) need microSDHC cards, as unlike the iPhone and Palm Pre, they have extremely limited internal storage. Up until now, the highest available capacity was 16GB, which is fine, but the media-centric iPhone 3GS offers 32GB of internal storage, leaving Android users feeling inferior in the music and video department.

As always, the highest-capacity flash memory card is prohibitively expensive at launch--right now, this 32GB card costs $200, which is either as much or significantly more than subsidized smartphones themselves cost. But that price will come down pretty quick, and soon we'll all have more storage than we know what to do with.

Sprint: Sprint made the biggest push for 4G--after all, their WiMax network is far and away the farthest along. Aside from announcing the first 4G phone, the HTC Evo 4G, and its own 4G version of Dell's Mini 10 netbook, Sprint also announced that they'll be rolling out WiMax in seven more cities this year--Cincinnati, Cleveland, LA, Miami, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City, and St. Louis will join the upcoming heavyweight rollouts of San Francisco, New York City, and Washington, DC this year. It's a crazy ambitious plan, but if Sprint can pull it off, they'll have a network no other carrier can touch.

Verizon: Verizon was no slouch on the 4G front either; they announced that their own LTE 4G network (faster than WiMax, actually) will see launch in 25-30 (unnamed) markets this year, supposedly covering a full third of Americans. They've also claimed that their 4G coverage will be even more comprehensive than their 3G coverage--impressive indeed, since they're the leader in 3G coverage at the moment. No hardware was announced, however.

T-Mobile: T-Mo, the Android pioneer, announced their own HSPA+ network at CTIA. It's not 4G, but rather a kind of 3G+: it's an overlay on their existing 3G network, so it's cheap and easy to build, and it still provides speeds three times faster than their existing 3G network. T-Mobile, like Sprint, will get its own version of the Dell Mini 10 netbook, arguably the best on the market, that will work with its high-speed network.

T-Mobile's strategy might be a short-term solution, but it's also the fastest and easiest and the most likely to actually meet its goals. Now all they need are some customers.

See the next slide for AT&T's version of "network upgrades."

While all the other carriers announced big, sweeping improvements in their ongoing next-gen 4G wireless networks, AT&T announced...this. The AT&T Microcell is actually a femtocell, essentially a portable cell phone tower. You plug it into your broadband network and it creates a failsafe AT&T network inside your own house. It can accept 10 connected products, four simultaneously. That's fine and all, though of course you could just use Wi-Fi if you're in your own house--but it's problematic for the message it sends to AT&T consumers.

The Microcell basically says to AT&T customers, "We know our network blows, and we know it doesn't even work in your own house. Instead of fixing it, we're just going to sell you this thing so you can fix our network for us." It's not an inspiring message, even if the effects are good.

The Microcell will go on sale next month for a $150 flat fee. Using the Microcell counts against your minutes, unless you want to spring for the $20 a month "unlimited Microcell minutes" plan, which works sort of like a landline plan. If you do opt for that, you'll get a $100 rebate on the Microcell itself.

OpenPeak's OpenTablet 7 is a very odd little item. It's a 7-inch tablet that'll go head-to-head with Apple's much-hyped iPad on AT&T, yet it has none of the name recognition, none of the cachet, no app store to speak of, and it doesn't run a recognizable OS. Its hardware is fine, and it's the first tablet to run Intel's "Moorestown" low-power Atom chip, but I'm not sure it's going to enjoy much success. From our own announcement:

And since the OpenTablet 7 will be on AT&T, it won't enjoy the "Droid effect" of being the competitor of a buzzed-about Apple product on a network where its competition isn't available. Instead, it's going head to head with the iPad--a suicide mission, if you ask me. It's a very curious little product, all in all; we see this kind of thing at electronics conventions all the time, and hardly any of them get picked up for wide distribution. The OpenTablet 7 has a chance to make a name for itself--but it'll have to climb a mountain to do it.

The OpenTablet 7 will be available "later this year" for an undetermined price on AT&T.