The annual Consumer Electronics Show kicked off yesterday in Las Vegas, where we were able to catch a glimpse of some upcoming phones from Motorola, LG and HTC. The CES is held each January for electronics companies to show off upcoming gadgetry and announce projects in the pipeline. Although it is a corporate event and not open to the general public, we were able to pick up some information regarding mobile phones of interest set for release in the coming months.
First up is Motorola, who officially unveiled their highly original new Android device. Purportedly in development under the pseudonym ‘Enzo’, the phone was revealed to the world as the Backflip, which is far more descriptive of what 
this phone is about. The Android touchscreen features a full QWERTY keyboard which is interestingly placed on the back of the phone. This might seem like a serious design flaw at first until you see how the screen opens out. Unlike phones with conventional sliding screens, the Backflips display swings round to be placed on the opposite side of the phone.
Also on show at the event was the new HTC Smart. The Smart will make a move away from the trend of using big name, and expensive, operating systems and will instead run on Qualcomm’s new Brew Mobile Platform. This is a lot cheaper to use than Windows Mobile or Android, and perhaps indicates that the Smart may be a much more affordable phone. The Smart will still use HTC’s Sense UI, so on the surface it will not feel much to different to using an HTC phone running on Android.
Meanwhile LG had an announcement of its own in the form of the LG GW990, the first smartphone to run on the Intel Moorestown processor. The Moorestown is Intel’s most up to date phone CPU and it will be interesting to see how it pans out against Qualcomm’s Snapdragon. The GW990 runs on Moblin, and also comes with a 5 megapixel camera, 4.8” panoramic screen and 3D gaming, among many other features.
These are some of the highlights of the first day of the CES event, but there are still three more days to go, and hopefully many more tantalizing phones to hear about.
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