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.