The year 2012 is going to be a huge step forward for the mobile market. The current generation is now poised to become the previous generation and new technologies are geared up and ready to replace the old ones. And, as with the advent of any new technology, every mobile company will try and get new handsets equipped with these new advancements as soon as possible to the masses in order to establish a following and make maximum use of the monopoly thus acquired due to lack of competitors. Today we look at the most anticipated handsets of the year along with the features which they claim will make them stand apart from other phones in the same specification range.

HTC One X

With the S2 beating the Sensation this generation, HTC had to come out all guns firing to ensure that it is not eclipsed by Samsung again. And hence, the One X. Featuring a swift Quad Core processor by Nvidia, this is probably the most anticipated quad core handset right now, until Samsung spill the beans on the S3. It also has enhancements to the UI and enhancements to the camera which enables it to click photos at a much faster rate and also enables burst mode which can allow users to click many images in an instant. Add to this the amazing build quality, and you have a complete phone, one which will give Samsung a run for its money.

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Nokia 808 Pureview

Touted as being the biggest surprise of Mobile World Congress 2012, this phone has taken the world by surprise. Nokia seems to have given up playing the following game, and is trying to explore new areas of innovation to regain the ground that it seems to have lost. Instead of trying to create a superphone which has everything, it’s trying to delve into the one area which has been their forté over the years – Camera. This beast of a phone has a 41 megapixel sensor which interpolates images into 5 mp snaps. The kicker over here is that each pixel is actually a scaled down version of 8 megapixels, and hence the image does not lose any quality while zooming.

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Asus Padfone

The Galaxy Note created a huge confusion among the users as to whether the device is a phone or a tablet. The Asus Padfone brings utmost clarity in this regard by being both a phone and a tablet without creating any ambiguity. So basically, what we have a here is a phone which is inserted at the back a tablet, and it becomes one with it to serve as the latter! The main advantage of this is the bigger screen and the improved battery life. Asus claims that with the tablet and the dock provided with it, battery life can improve almost 9 times as much as that of the average smartphone, which is huge! And with ICS (Android 4.0) integrated into it, there no reason not to put this as a prime contender on your wishlist when you go mobile shopping next time.

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Huawei Ascend D Quad

Samsung did something different when it launched the S2; instead of putting a pre made processor into the phone, it created its own processor. Today the Esxynox is considered as the fastest processor of the last generation. It beats both the Tegra 2 and Qualcomm variants by quite some distance and made the S2 the absolute phenomenon that it turned out to be. Huawei seems to have taken inspiration from Samsung’s approach and are packing their own processor into their flagship Ascend D quad handset. They also claim it to be the fastest phone in the world, which is quite a tall claim with the next gen Tegra and Qualcomm processor making waves with their performance in the mobile market. But if the performance of the phone supports their claims, then we could have a new winner in the mobile market.

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Samsung Galaxy S3

Samsung are quite mum about this one, but we know its coming. And we’re waiting; not just us, but the whole world is waiting. S2 owned the last generation, and the S3 is the only phone that can match the hype. Other competitors might have all the fancy new features, but S3 has the brand and following behind it. And it’s not like it won’t have tricks of its own; Samsung will make sure it packs the absolute best features available in the market today and make another classic which will blow us away. And i hope we don’t have to wait for too long for that to happen.

So these are our picks for the most anticipated and new smartphones of 2012. Feel free to comment on the article or add handsets/ of your choice in the comments section below!