Android comes to AT&T Cell Phone Models. Right to the

Android comes to AT&T Cell Phone Models. Right to the iPhone's Front Yard

The way the iPhone can sometimes hog tech news headlines, you'd think that there was that the AT&T cell phone business had going for it. The iPhone may be too much of a good thing for AT&T if you ask me; take the Samsung Captivate for instance. This phone, if it had come out in a world that didn't know of an iPhone, would have people gathering around and hailing it like it was a gift from the God of cell phones. But in the world that is ruled by the iPhone, anything by company that's not Apple can only hope to sell itself on its features, and not a godlike halo. AT&T has announced four phones running Android on its network, the Captivate being the first one. Let's look at some of the AT&T cell phone models on offer right now that could be the next iPhone, if only people would give them a chance.

Let's start with the Captivate from Samsung. This smartphone tries to compete with the iPhone 4's Retina Display, with a powerful AMOLED touchscreen of its own. It's the first phone to bring the Android vs. iPhone controversy close to home for the iPhone and it's a terrific implementation too. The Captivate runs on AT&T's 7.2 Mbps 3G network, it has Bluetooth 3.0, and WiFi N. It captures HD video and still images on a 5 megapixel camera, it has a GPS receiver, gyroscope, a six-axis sensor and an accelerometer. And best of all, it runs Android particularly powerfully, on its 1GHz processor.

The next Android AT&T cell phone up is the Motorola Backflip - a cleverly named flip phone to be sure. It only costs $50 on a two-year plan, abd has some pretty special features. But let's start with the reverse flip phone design. The phone is made of a screen and a QWERTY keyboard back to back. Both the screen and the keyboard are always exposed. When you hold the phone to your ear, the rear of the phone, which is the keyboard, nestles into your hand - which is a funny feeling. The 3-inch touchscreen is nice and bright, if not AMOLED bright. When you want to use the screen and the keyboard together, you fold the screen up so that it kind of looks like a tiny laptop; and this exposes the back of the screen, that has a backtrack sensor - a touchpad (a cool idea). I love the fact that they tried something new with the design, as I am fairly tired of the standard slider/candy bar design philosophy. I'd give the Motorola pretty good marks for innovation.

The Dell Aero will be the company's first smartphone, and it will be the lightest Android phone on AT&T. This candy bar AT&T cell phone comes with standard Android apps for YouTube, Google talk, Gmail and so on, and it will have all kinds of social networking software in-built. The processor is about half the speed of the one on the Captivate though; but hey, it comes with handwriting recognition on its touchscreen, and that should be something that helps it stand out. Dell has some more powerful smartphone models out too, like the Thunder, though you'll probably have to find someone other than AT&T to partner with for them.

And finally, comes HTC's smartphone, the Aria. It's a midpriced phone that's all touchscreen and no keyboard. It works on HTC's Sense interface that enhances Android's own, and it comes with GPS, Bluetooth, WiFi and access to the 7.2 M. bps 3G network on AT&T. The five-megapixel camera is pretty great, and I especially love the way it accommodates a standard 1/8 inch headphone plug. This AT&T cell phone goes for $149 with a two-year plan.

In my book, the Samsung Captivate wins the Android race on AT&T. The screen is simply to die for, and the special graphics processing makes movies a pleasure to watch.