That would be good news for Sony Ericsson, whose previous flagship smart phone, the Windows-powered Xperia X1, wasn't sold by any U.S. carrier. Since carriers (also known as operators in the industry) subsidize expensive phones, they're the gatekeepers of the U.S. phone market.

"If you want to be big in America you need to work with the operator," Nordberg said.

Sony Ericsson has also been hamstrung in the U.S. market because its phones work fully only on AT&T's network. Nordberg said it would adapt future models to other U.S. providers, but didn't give any specifics.

The X10 is a keyboard-less touch-screen phone very similar to the iPhone. The X10 mini, announced at the show, has the same layout but is half the size, an unusual design for a smart phone. The X10 mini pro looks the same, but features a slide-out keyboard. Prices were not announced.

The joint venture of LM Ericsson AB of Sweden and Sony Corp. of Japan sold 14.6 million phones in the fourth quarter, making it the world's fourth-largest phone maker, just ahead of Motorola. The two have been trading places as No. 4 for a while. Nokia Corp., LG Electronics Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. are all bigger. Yet Motorola is much bigger in the U.S. market, where consumers are enamored with expensive smart phones.

LG Versa is the same as other smartphones that have QWERTY keyboard, but the difference between a QWERTY keyboard can be removed at any time when not to use. LG Versa can be used without a QWERTY keyboard (removable) so that its shape becomes like a touch-screen phone without a keypad/keyboard. QWERTY keyboard can be put back and will be very useful if you want to write long messages, or even to edit the work file. For his own specifications, LG Versa uses touch-screen 3-inch type size OLED (480 × 240), 2 megapixels camera, GPS and CDMA networks (EV-DO). In terms of design, LG Versa give something more of our own but still prefer a QWERTY keyboard with a system of “slide” and was always available whenever desired.