Hasta La Gadget!

LAS VEGAS — We knew there would be a slew of new smartphones appearing at CES 2011 — and we weren’t disappointed.

From Samsung to Sony Ericsson, Android-dedicated handset debuts have been surrounded by the “oohs” and “aahs” of nerd-struck admirers.

We’ve seen the big: Motorola’s Droid Bionic touts a huge 4.3-inch display, yet is still outgunned by the mammoth 4.5 inches of Samsung’s Infuse. Even the LG Optimus 2X’s respectable 4-inch screen seemed dwarf-like in comparison.

There’s the badass: Powerhouse processors clocking in at 1 GHz and higher are in like Flynn. Motorola’s Atrix 4G and LG’s Optimus 2X, for instance, are running dual-core 1-GHz NVidia Tegra 2 processors.

And then there’s the beautiful: LG’s Optimus Black boasts it’s the “world’s slimmest 9.2-mm device,” while Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Arc has a thickness of only 8.7 mm at its waist. Being beautiful still means being thin, apparently.

Whether it’s brawn or beauty, these are some of the coolest Android phones we saw in Vegas this year.

Above:

Motorola Atrix

The Atrix was one of the coolest announcements Motorola made, mostly because of its WebTop Dock. If you connect the dock to a larger display like your desktop monitor, the phone outputs a desktop-like user interface. You even use a mouse and keyboard to navigate it. We got some quality time with the Atrix (despite the best efforts of Motorola’s employees to stop us) and came away impressed.