Best of CTIA 2011: PhoneArena's Pick

CTIA is officially over, but we're left with not only the memories of sunny Orlando, but also a handful of cell phones and tablets, which will dominate the mobile landscape throughout the next year. Sprint was the company that turned all eyes with a couple of announcements, but in terms of novelty, we were divided between them and Sammy's amazingly slim cleavers tablets. To make things even more interesting T-Mobile and AT&T joined the pack with a couple of additions to their lineups. Without further ado, here are the top of the crop gadgets we saw:

1) HTC EVO 3D - 4G and 3D are two of the hottest words in every geek’s dictionary, and that's what you get with the new EVO by Sprint. It also packs a 4.3-inch qHD resolution display, dual-core Snapdragon processor clocked at 1.2GHz, 1024MB of RAM and Android 2.3. Or, to put it in another way, the great Sprint EVOlution is in full swing. Head on to our hands-on for a quick overview of its features.

2) Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 – quite honestly, we have never seen a company do what Samsung did with the Tab 10.1. It literally scrapped the original 10.1-inch slate, which was just getting warmed up for a May launch, under pressure from the iPad 2 and redesigned the Galaxy Tab 10.1 completely. The two tablets come in different sizes, but they both manage to do one thing – redefine thickness with their 0.34” waistline. The 1GHz dual-core processor powering the tablet optimized Honeycomb, makes us smile, and have our hopes high as now we can finally admit that the iPad 2 will have a legitimate competitor not only in specs, but in looks as well. We gave them the hands-on treatment here (8.9-inch) and here (10.1-inch).

3) LG Thrill 4G – the LG Thrill 4G is an AT&T rebranded LG Optimus 3D, mixing the magical third dimension with a dual-channel dual-core architecture for a truly immersive experience. HD videos in 3D are powered by a dual-core 5-megapixel camera setup and all of that processed by a mighty 1GHz TI OMAP 4430 chip. If this shook your confidence about getting the HTC EVO 3D, you're not alone – check out our comparison between the two to see which one wins in a cold-blooded specs battle.

4) HTC EVO View 4G – Last, but not least we have the Sprint version of the HTC Flyer tablet. The 1.5GHz processor on the 7-inch tablet powers the gorgeous HTC Sense, which was re-modeled particularly for slates. The Scribe technology and the included stylus, make for a truly unique experience, one you can experience in full motion in our video demonstration here. All the usual goodies like two cameras, HDMI and DLNA support are present as well. Hands-on experience here and the Scribe technology is demonstrated here.