Hottest smart phones and accessories for 2015

At CES 2015, smart phones found their way into just about every product, from vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, and baby rockers to cameras, TVs, and cars. The phones themselves were impressive, too. In the coming months, you'll see wireless chargers, incredible cameras, ultra-fast cables, and even a phone tough enough to withstand an elephant.

—Mike Gikas

LG re-Flexes its smart-phone muscles

LG went back to the drawing board to give us a new version of its G Flex smart phone, the slightly curved, slightly bendy phone that continued to function even after we applied 1,000 pounds of pressure to it. But this model is smaller (5.9 × 3.0 × 0.35 inches vs. 6.3 x 3.2 x 0.4 inches), making it easier to grip, while its 5.5-inch OLED display is notably sharper (403 pixels per inch vs. 245). There are higher-resolution displays out there, including the 540 ppi display on the LG G 3, but our tests have found it's hard to notice improvements in resolution above 400 ppi. According to LG, delivering a very high level of resolution on a flexible display is quite a challenge given how the several layers its made of move when the screen is bent.

The phone's 13 MP camera (same as before) adds an optical image stabilizer, which our tests have confirmed improves your chances of taking better pictures under low-light conditions or when it's difficult to keep your hand steady. It also has a fast 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor and will run Android 5.0 when it debuts on AT&T, Sprint, and U.S. Cellular later this year.

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A fool-proof, fast connection for Androids

Android phones, if you're keeping score, usually trump iPhones when it comes to advanced hardware—except for power/data connections. While Android phone owners squint to make sure the tiny micro USB cable is in the correct position before inserting it into their phones (a technique that often fails), iPhone and iPad owners chuckle because there is no "wrong-side up" for their Lightning connectors. That disadvantage ends with the upcoming USB Type-C cable, which, like a Lightning connector, fits no matter which way you hold it. On top of that, Type-C is supposed to be a speedier connection, at 10Gbps. What's more, the USB Type-C supports bi-directional power. That means your phone will receive a charge while it's transmitting files to a compatible TV, printer, or other accessory over the same cable. The bad news: When your new phone has this connector, you need to buy a whole bunch of Type-C adapters to connect them to your old PC and accessories.

Taking power from thin air

Forget USB cables and even charging matts. Energous's WattUp is a charging system that beams power over RF waves to a Mophie-like case attached to your phone when it's within 15 ft  of the power router. The power router, which plugs into an AC outlet, actually charges a 1,000 mAh battery built into the custom case. When your phone's own battery power capacity drops below a certain point, the battery in the case quickly (in just a few seconds) recharges it to about 40 percent capacity. The closer your phone, the faster the charge. Energous says the system will be available from "various manufacturers" in Q4 2015.

Another Kodak moment

Bullitt, a company no one's ever heard of, is reviving a brand everyone has: Kodak. The Kodak IM5 smartphone has a 13MP rear camera with autofocus and flash that is "surprisingly simple," according to the company, meaning it enables just some basic editing, fun effects, and sharing tools, but no fancy manual-style settings for ISO, white balance, etc. The mostly plastic phone, which has chrome-like trim along its edges, has a simple interface that sits atop Android 4.4. The handset is simple in other ways, too. The 5-inch display has only 720P resolution and the phone comes with only 8GB of storage, which can be expanded another 32GB via a micro SD memory card. European rollout begins in Q1 2015, along with a Kodak-branded tablet and connected camera. No word yet on a U.S. debut.

Dead brand talking: Palm

Chinese manufacturer TCL, which makes the Alcatel OneTouch smartphone, has been leaking though various news channels that it plans to resurrect the Palm brand, which HP relinquished  last December. It's not clear what TCL will be selling because the devices are expected to run Android, not Palm's now ancient webOS, which went to LG in 2013.  

Cameras that think they're phones

Panasonic is pairing its Lumix compact camera technology with a smart phone. The high-resolution, 20-megapixel camera has high-quality 28mm fixed lens and a 1-inch image sensor, huge for a smart phone. That should help it take decent shots under low-light conditions. Like the LG's G3, this model shoots 4K video, though in our tests, cameras with high-resolution cameras don't do as well as you might think in the video-quality department. But stills should look dazzling on the phone's 4.7-inch 1080P display. The Lumix DMC CM1 debuted in Europe several months ago, but won't be coming stateside until this summer, when it will appear on T-Mobile. It will run Android 4.4 out of the box.

Smokin' Asus phones

Asus, the company that brought us the bumpy PadFone tablet/smartphone, is putting another bump on its Zenfone Zoom. This time Asus is giving the main 13-megapixel camera a 3X optical zoom (12X digital)—and optical zoom is the new best thing in smart-phone photography. The camera also has an optical image stabilizer—handy for taking pictures under low-light conditions. Samsung's Galaxy S Zoom was the first smart phone whose camera had optical zoom, but it failed because it was too bulky and actually took lousy pictures. This attempt may actually work because it's ultra sleek (0.47 inches) and actually pretty advanced for a smart phone. Check out the specs: a 5.5-inch, 1080P display with a resolution of 403 pixels per inch, a 5-megapixel front-facing camera, 128 gigabytes of onboard storage, a mammoth 3,000 mAh battery—and it ships with Android Lollipop. Excited? Well, there's a major wrinkle: There's a strong possibility we won't see it in the U.S.  

The Lamborghini smart phone

 "The new 88 Tauri designed by Tonino Lamborghini is the perfect fusion of Italian design and the most advanced technology, and is the only smartphone up to your lifestyle," says the ad for this $6,000 phone. Yeah, right. I'll leave it to fashion experts to judge the 88 Tauri's Italian sports-car design, but inside, it's the Buick of smart phones, with a ho-hum 2.3 GHz quad-core Snapdragon 801 processor, 32GB storage, and a 5-inch 1080P display. The 20-megapixel main camera and 8-megapixel front facing camera are a nice touch, though. Available "soon" where all Lamborghini owners shop.

Click on the image above to find all of Consumer Reports' coverage from CES 2015.