A day after AT&T announced its “best-ever” quarter for smartphone sales, rival operator Verizon Wireless is doing exactly the same thing. The carrier has announced that it expects to have reached a record 9.8 million sales during the fourth quarter of 2012, and it’s attributing that success to the popularity of the iPhone.

Just look at that picture. Smartphone vendors are finally make Android handsets beautiful. This is the Grand S, the latest flagship smartphone from Chinese gadget maker ZTE, and it’s the world’s thinnest smartphone to offer a full high-definition, 1080p display. It also packs a quad-core processor, and a 13-megapixel camera.

T-Mobile USA will finally start selling the iPhone and enforce its plan to eliminate subsidies in “three to four months,” according to the company’s chief executive, John Legere. It will be the first time T-Mobile has offered in the iPhone in the United States since the handset was first released launched in 2007.

After Sony’s new Xperia Z appeared on the show floor at CES on Monday, we were certain that the Japanese company would make it official soon after. And it’s now done just that. The Xperia Z is its latest flagship smartphone, with a 5-inch 1080p display, a 1.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro processor, and a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera.

Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer HTC failed to meet analysts’ estimates during the fourth quarter of 2012, posting an operating income that of just NT$600 million ($21 million). The average estimate from 20 industry analysts was NT$1.11 billion, according to Bloomberg — that’s almost double the figure HTC actually achieved.