Smartphone Essentials Awards 2009

2009 has seen an outstanding range of new smart phone devices come to the market. These smart phones are not only mobile phones, but portable computers performing all kinds of tasks which would not have been imaginable a few years ago.

The Smartphone essentials awards 2009 are now looming upon us, and the nominations have now been revealed. So which handsets are fighting to be in the spotlight? Let’s have a look at the candidates.

The first category is the ‘Best Consumer Smart Phone’. This is where you will find the key players of the smart phone market, so this will be a tough area to judge. The Apple iPhone 3GS is the first nominee, which is probably the most obvious handset to be up for nomination. Offering double the speed than the iPhone 3G and other features such as video recording and editing, could the iPhone 3GS be the most powerful smart phone on the market? The Nokia N97 is also competing for the best consumer smart phone, and is a powerful multimedia computer thanks to 32GB of internal memory plus a memory card slot. The device puts all your favourite social networking sites on your home screen as interactive shortcuts so you can stay connected. The N97 also features a slide out QWERTY keyboard making it perfect for instant messaging and email.

The Samsung i8910 HD is the first and only mobile phone capable of recording HD video. The i8910 HD runs on the Symbian operating system, and with a 3.7 inch touchscreen display, this handset is pleasurable to use. An incredible 8.0 megapixel camera takes stunning photography, and the i8910 HD also benefits from Wi-Fi connectivity, GPS and HSDPA.

HTC appear to be dominating this category, with three of their handsets up for nomination. The first is the Hero, which runs on the Android OS allowing for numerous applications to be downloaded to fully customise the phone. A built in 5.0 megapixel camera creates quality images which can be viewed clearly on the 3.2 inch touchscreen display. The Hero comes in both Black and Pink, catering for a larger target audience. The HTC Touch Diamond2 is also up for consideration, and has a range of features available for users. Running on Windows Mobile 6.1 means users can synchronise with Outlook as well as open and edit word and excel documents. The Touch Diamond2 also sports a 5.0 megapixel camera, Wi-Fi connectivity, HSDPA and GPS. Finally The HTC Magic runs on Android OS supporting Google services including Gmail, Google maps and Google search. The on screen QWERTY keyboard makes composing messages a lot easier, and a 3.2 megapixel camera which is great at capturing quality photos.

The second category is ‘Best Business Smartphone’. The BlackBerry Curve 8520 is one of the candidates for this award, and can offer users a full QWERTY keypad which is ideal for firing off all of your emails, texts and other documents. BlackBerry push email is also supported so the 8520 can send and receive emails from a range of different accounts which are located all over the world. The HTC Touch Pro2 is also being marketed here as a business mobile phone. Running on Windows Mobile 6.1 you can access office documents 24/7, and the impressive 3.6 touchscreen display means that everything on screen can be read clearly.

Nokia E52 is another candidate and can offer up to 8 hours of talk time, and with a new and improved predictive text you can compose messages a lot faster. With the choice of both business and work home screens, you can keep work and play separate. The other handsets in this category include the HTC Snap and the Acer M900.

‘Best Value smart phone’ sees a range of handsets up for nomination, including the Blackberry Curve 8520 which has now been nominated for two awards. The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is also up for consideration, which is a full touchscreen mobile hosting a 3.2 inch display. The 5800 also specialises in music, which recognises most digital formats including MP3 and AAC, and with an expandable memory you can be sure to have enough storage for all of your favourite tunes. Other handsets fighting for this title include the Acer F900 which boasts a 3.2 megapixel camera and runs on the WinMo 6.1 OS, the Nokia E63 which runs on the Symbian OS and has a 2.4 inch display and the O2 Xda Zest which also operates on WinMo 6.1 and has a 3.0 megapixel camera.

Some of the other categories include ‘Best SatNav system’ and ‘Best SatNav Software’. All handsets which have been nominated boast quality features and hold many opportunities for the user, so it is bound to be a hard choice to decide which mobile phones deserve to win. The results will be revealed in the next issue of Smartphone Essentials which is due 3^rd November.