Video: Samsung Galaxy S Advance

There's a bit of a quiet period developing between the CES show in January and the MWC show which has been pushed back two weeks to the end of February. In the meantime manufacturers are making a few announcements.. and the Samsung Galaxy S Advance is one of them.

No, this isn't an upgrade to the Samsung Galaxy S II (that would be the Samsung Galaxy S III). It's an upgrade to the original Samsung Galaxy S. Yes, you thought that was the Galaxy S II. So did we. It sits in the wide gap between the Galaxy R and Galaxy Y, so it should be a Galaxy M or Galaxy W. But it isn't.

We think that Samsung may have painted themselves into a corner with their naming convention, and have managed to cause some market confusion.. which is a shame because the Galaxy S Advance is a very decent looking upper midrange smartphone which is exactly the sort of thing many customers are looking for.

Video: Motorola DEFY+ JCB Edition

I guess this is what Bob the Builder would use..

Video: Sony Xperia ion

Heading exclusively to A&T, the Sony Xperia ion has big HD display, a very high resolution camera and support for 4G LTE data.

Video: Huawei Ascend P1 and P1 S

Huawei seem to be trying to follow in the footsteps of HTC, a brand that was pretty unknown until a few years ago even though HTC handsets were commonly sold under carrier names.

The ultra-slim Huawei Ascent P1 S and the still impressively slim Huawei Ascend P1 look like they might put Huawei on the map in the same way. These two Android 4.0 devices are really impressive when it comes to technical specifications, and they look OK as well. Are they good enough to tempt customers from Samsung and HTC though?

Video: Sony Xperia S

This is almost definitely going to be one of 2012's sexiest phones. the Sony Xperia S drops the "Ericsson" tag but adds a dual-core 1.5 GHz CPU, 1GB of RAM, a 12 megapixel main camera and a 4.3" 720 x 1280 pixel display enhanced with Sony goodness.

But what really sells it is the transparent strip at the bottom, which half conceals the usual Android line-up of keys. Yes, it's a bit silly.. but it lifts this from being a typical black slab to being something a bit more interesting.

Video: Motorola DROID 4

It doesn't seem that long ago when the DROID 3 was launched.. in fact, it was just six months ago. This version of the DROID looks a little different, but it's pretty much a straightforward upgrade over the DROID 3, and it isn't the "RAZR with a keyboard" that some were expecting.

We don't know if and when there will be a GSM Milestone 4 version of this, but bear in mind that the Milestone 3 didn't ship in Europe, which is a real shame.

Video: Polaroid SC1630

The Android from Polaroid. The SC1630 is half smartphone (or compact tablet), half digital camera.. and it's not as daft an idea as it sounds. Android is pretty good at sharing photos and video clips, and a quick look at the market shows lots of interesting applications you can use with it.

But even the best phone digital cameras struggle against cheap dedicated cameras, especially when it comes to optical zoom. I think you can count the smartphones with optical zoom on the fingers on one hand.

Polaroid are a bit unclear about the cellular capabilities here. It certainly has WiFi, it looks like 3G might be an optional extra. You could always tether the SC1630 to another smartphone if you were out and about though, Android's wireless hotspot feature would work for this.

We don't know when this will be out, we are guessing it won't be anytime soon..

Video: Motorola MOTOLUXE lacks LUXE

The MOTOLUXE is a big screen beastie and looks pretty impressive.. except inside it is powered by a feeble 800 MHz processor which isn't really enough to do justice to the sort of apps that would fully utilise the 4" 854 x 480 pixel display. Anyway.. the point seems to be to make something with a big screen that is still quite affordable, so there may well be a (small) market for this sort of thing.

Video: Motorola DEFY.. Mini?

Usually "mini" handsets are smaller versions of existing phones.. the problem with the Motorola DEFY Mini is that it isn't much smaller than the original DEFY, but the screen is and the overall specification is a lot more basic. Perhaps "Motorola DEFY El-Cheapo Edition" didn't have the same ring to it.

Video: Samsung Galaxy Ace Plus

The original Samsung Galaxy Ace has sold pretty well, the last time I checked at Amazon it was the #10 best seller in the SIM free sections which isn't bad. The new one is much faster and has a slightly bigger screen, although the resolution is quite low. It will all come down to cost I suppose.