The Android Smartphone Wars Shift into High Gear

With so many manufacturers of Android phones, they have competed on producing more and more advanced hardware to gain market share. But 2012 has seen the most amazing Droid on Droid battles. Back in May 2012, HTC launched the HTC One X and HTC One S, which were the best smartphone ever built --- for all of one month. In June, Samsung launched its Galaxy S III, and the HTC offerings soon found themselves in the Galaxy's shadow. By the time the LG Optimus 4X HD came out, with specifications similar to the HTC One X, it barely made a ripple. A quad core 4.7-inch Android with a 720p display, was well, getting boring. LG seems to have realized this too, and prepared a new flagship, the LG Optimus G which brought an even faster quad core processor, a Qualcomm Krait with much more powerful graphics chip. This phone became the basis of the Google Nexus 7. And this is starting to look old on release.

HTC Butterfly packs a quad core Qualcomm S4 with a Full HD (1920 x 1080) display

HTC scrambled to produce a world beater. While HTC upgraded its HTC One X, and released the HTC One X+, it prepared a even more formidable beast.  Rhe HTC One X+ won't hold flagship status, since HTC had already released it HTC Butterfly J/Droid DNA which threw in a 5-inch 1080p display into the fray, making the Galaxy S III look like last years model. 

It looks like by the first quarter of 2013 you will see a fair number of quad core phones with 5-inch 1080p, and I am guessing the Galaxy S IV will come out sooner rather than later. It looks like in short order 1080p displays and 5-inch screens will be common place on the Android landscape.