Handsets: It's Motorola's Year to Shine

With new models and faster networks, it looks like handsets in the class of 2005 have more than a Razr's edge over last year's bunch.

Mobile-phone sales hit an all-time high of 630 million units last year, riding a worldwide surge in demand for compact, colorful camera phones. If new features from Nokia (NOK Quote) and sleek designs from Motorola (MOT Quote) and Samsung helped pump up demand in 2004, then the second half of this year promises to be another huge event for wireless-device makers.

Going well beyond cameras, the newest batch of phones offers video, music, hard-drive storage, flash memory, Blackberry-inspired email and Wi-Fi access. In other words, the cell phone takes a step closer to becoming the all-in-one mobile device. ...