CES 2005
The UTStarcom CDM-180 is the new wide-screen CDMA phone from the company formerly known as Audiovox. While it looks like the photos are distorted, they're not - the CDM-180 definitely looks like a phone that someone left in a back pocket and compressed by an inch.
The "wide" landscape-oriented screen is designed to match the shape of typical photos and videos. This allows you to take a normal photo, and use the full screen to frame and view the shot, without holding the phone sideways.
The CDM-180 also features dual TFT displays, at an impressive 262,000 colors each. A VGA camera with video capture, speakerphone, and voice dialing round out the feature set.
The CDM-8940 is one of the three new VCast EV-DO phones that Verizon will be launching in three weeks. This feature-packed model sports dual TFT displays, a 1.3 megapixel camera with video capture and LED flash, MP3 player, a miniSD memory card slot, and speakerphone.
The camera has a strange design. A sliding lens cover protects the lens when not in use. To use the camera, you need to slide the cover open with your fingernail, and then slide the switch on the side, which pushes the camera out to the correct angle to match the plane of the display. That two-step process is a bit cumbersome, and the mechanism doesn't feel particularly sturdy.
The 9200 is an interesting model. It has a standard mid-range feature set, except for a really huge amount of memory - 128 MB. The camera is only VGA resolution, but the idea is that you can simply keep all your phootos on your phone and not have to upload them to the network. It's also really small.