There are many variables you might consider when comparing smartphones. How it looks, its price, the operator it's available from, whether there's a touchscreen or qwerty keyboard, the quality of the camera, the web browser it uses and how good it is for email are all important factors.
Street cred also plays its part, as responses to PC Advisor's call for nominations for the gadget of the year proved. The iPhone was far and away the most cited response.
You'll be tied into an 18- or 24-month contract with most handsets, however, so it's important that you choose the right phone for your needs rather than the most fashionable one.
For many people, the first question will be: "Is it an iPhone?" Now that Tesco, Orange and Vodafone have joined O2 and The Carphone Warehouse in selling Apple's sought-after handset, the iPhone no longer has the exclusivity it began with. Nevertheless, it's the most recognisable and most desired smartphone there is - for now.
But not everyone wants to follow the herd and, besides, Nokia continues to rule the smartphone roost with high-volume sales of the successor handsets to its ground-breaking . In particular, the has been well received of late. Its Symbian operating system (OS) is the most successful mobile platform of all time (no wonder Nokia bought it outright in 2008) and, while the N900 model it unveiled in October 2009 uses an interface based on , it will continue to offer Symbian handsets well into the next decade.
Meanwhile, the , the first second-generation Google Android phone, has proved very popular in the US. And let's not forget that 2009 was just as much about the Palm Pre and some excellent phones from HTC as it was about .
RIM, maker of the , is also still very much in the game. The , launched in mid-2009, is its most successful handset to date and offers the twin appeal of being a solid, attractive, well-connected handset and costing £10 a month less than an iPhone or Palm Pre.
With Tesco now flogging Apple's darling, we expect more aggressive pricing for the current crop of high-end smartphones and some amazing deals on slightly less kitchen-sink-and-all models. Industry analysts say the mid-tier of handsets is where the growth, competition and, therefore, the best deals will be.
To try to make sense of what's out there, we assembled a combination of touchscreen and slider phones, plus more traditional qwerty-keyboard handsets. We've used the same text and sample email for each smartphone to assess the ease and accuracy of input.
We've also commented on responsiveness and how easy it was to get to the feature or contact we needed.
We've also looked at handsets running on several mobile OSes to establish whether Palm's WebOS is really able to juggle six or more open apps at once and whether Google's Android is really the fast, stutter-free experience it's reputed to be.
We considered call quality and contacts, too, finding out how easily you can find the number for the person you want to dial and how good each smartphone is at its most essential purpose.
Connectivity and the web-browsing experience also played their part in our tests, as did battery life. Nor did we discount those all-important extras: the camera, media player and apps that allow the phone to be personalised.
As you'll see from the range of handsets we've reviewed here, there's no single perfect device. For that matter, there's no platform we'd absolutely suggest you steer clear of. Two new options - Palm's WebOS and Android - have muddied the waters. With the HTC HD2, even Windows Mobile comes good.With the HTC Hero and the Motorola Dext we find the Google open-source platform is maturing. Nokia's Maemo OS is also an enticing proposition, but it's let down by the hardware. And WebOS, with its multitasking and ability to make sense of multiple continuous contact modes, is also compelling.The one interface that seems to have stood still could actually be Apple's, although it's hard to argue with the incredible inventory of apps that customers can draw upon.In the end, however, we had to make a choice of the best smartphone based on the best mix of phone, contact, web browsing, interface and design.The iPhone 3GS fell down on the first two, but ruled elsewhere, while the dinky Palm Pre won us over in almost every way. But that's just our opinion. Smartphones are as personal as it gets in the world of technology, and so is the decision about which you prefer.