3. Samsung Galaxy Note II

Release Date: October 24

Carrier/Price: AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile; $300 w/two-year contract

The first Galaxy Note was a good phone that helped set the mold for today's tablet-phone hybrid market. Still, most reviewers felt it wasn't the "next big thing" Samsung promised, even panning it as nothing more than an oversized Galaxy S II with a stylus. The company looks to prove its naysayers wrong by integrating the enhanced S-Pen technology from the Galaxy Note 10.1 and some user interface features of the Galaxy S III. Hardware upgrades come in the form of a 5.5-inch HD SUPER AMOLED display, 1.6GHz quad-core processor, and 2GB of RAM. The phone is also said to come with Jelly Bean right out the box. Don’t call it a comeback.