ZTE isn’t your household manufacturer name but prepare to hear it a lot as they unveiled quite a large lineup at MWC. Most notable is their flagship ZTE Era. The Era joins the quad-core cool kids’ table by rocking NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 4-PLUS-1 processor. Interestingly enough, it also features NVIDIA’s Icera 450 HSPA+ modem. Other specs include:

Mobile World Congress is undoubtebly one of the premiere places to see smartphones, but how about 3,500 smartphones fashioned to metal rods to create a 19-foot tall mythical winged horse? Well, that’s exactly what you’ll find guarding this year’s MWC thanks to Huawei and London’s Machine Shop.

To show just how fast Android has grown, Andy Rubin busted out a few numbers from last year’s Mobile World Congress and wasn’t shy about sharing them. Year-on-year growth rate for Android has exceeded 250% with more than 850,000 Android devices being activated each day. That’s an astounding number, and with over 300 million Android device around the world, users are going to be looking for apps. Last year at Mobile World Congress, Android announced the Android Market had reached more than 150,000 available apps. Now, they have announced over 450,000 apps available with over one billion app downloads happening every month!

The iPhone is ranked as the top smartphone in the United States, and with sales on the upward trend worldwide, one would think that there’s no stopping Apple’s magical handset. As it turns out, the iPhone has a “crutch” that’s key to its success: carrier subsidies.

It’s common practice for U.S. carriers to subsidize a phone to make it more affordable for the average consumer. The trick is that customers get locked into a two-year contract. While Apple profits and carriers take an initial hit off the subsidized model in countries like the U.S. and U.K., less expensive Android devices are dominating markets where consumers pay full price for their new phones.

Welcome to Monday’s Apps For Kids, a new Cult of Android feature where we take a look at kid-centric apps. Many of us are parents with kids who seem to know their way around our mobile devices better than we do. With the Android Market having over 400,000 apps, it can be quite a daunting task trying to find apps appropriate for our young tech enthusiasts. With Monday’s Apps For Kids, we hope to make that task easier by suggesting an array of topics and apps that have been kid tested and parent approved. So grab whatever crayon is lying around and get ready to write down a few apps worth checking out.