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Top posts, devices, and smartphone awards for 2009

By | December 15, 2009, 5:20am PST

Summary: As we wrap up 2009, I wanted to put together another one of my reference posts that looks at the devices I have reviewed over the past year, along with some fun awards for the devices I had the chance to try out. You can check out my 2008 year in review post and see what I thought about the mobile phone world at that time. It was interesting to see that a whopping five of my top ten most viewed blog posts for 2009 were part of my Clash of the Touch Titans series with other top posts being my reviews of the Sprint HTC Hero, HTC HD2, and RIM BlackBerry Tour.

As we wrap up 2009, I wanted to put together another one of my reference posts that looks at the devices I have reviewed over the past year, along with some fun awards for the devices I had the chance to try out. You can check out my 2008 year in review post and see what I thought about the mobile phone world at that time. It was interesting to see that a whopping five of my top ten most viewed blog posts for 2009 were part of my Clash of the Touch Titans series with other top posts being my reviews of the Sprint HTC Hero, HTC HD2, and RIM BlackBerry Tour. So, let’s start this post out with the Top 10 posts of 2009:

  1. Clash of Touch Titans: iPhone 3G vs. Palm Pre
  2. Clash of Touch Titans: iPhone 3G vs. HTC Magic
  3. Clash of Touch Titans: iPhone 3G vs. HTC Touch Diamond2
  4. Hands-on review of the Sprint HTC Hero
  5. Clash of Touch Titans: iPhone 3G vs. RIM BlackBerry Storm
  6. Review of the HTC HD2
  7. Clash of the QWERTY sliders: HTC Touch Pro2 vs. Nokia N97
  8. Verizon’s HTC Droid Eris may be best $100 smartphone
  9. Clash of Touch Titans: iPhone 3G vs. Samsung OmniaHD
  10. King of the QWERTYs: RIM BlackBerry Tour

The focus of this blog is on smartphone reviews and looking back at 2009 you can find I evaluated at least 18 mobile phones as listed below:

Here are some of my favorite software titles I checked out in 2009:

I have a couple of titles I would like to award to the devices, accessories, and software I checked out in 2009.

Best QWERTY keyboard: RIM BlackBerry Bold 9700
Best looking display: HTC HD2
Device that surprised me: Palm Pre (Palm shocked me a bit with this turnaround device.)

Best S60 device of the year: Nokia N97 mini (Much improved design over N97)
Best Windows Mobile touch screen device of the year: HTC HD2
Best Windows Mobile non-touch screen device: T-Mobile Dash 3G
Best Palm WebOS device of the year: Palm Pre
Best BlackBerry device of the year: RIM BlackBerry Bold 9700
Best Google Android device of the year: Sprint HTC Hero

Worst mobile device of the year: T-Mobile Shadow
Best overall mobile device of the year: Apple iPhone 3GS

Best mobile phone accessory: BodyGuardz skins
Best mobile software: CoPilot Live 8

Biggest disappointment: Windows Mobile 6.5
Most dramatic rise and fall: Palm WebOS

As we move into 2010 there are some devices we know are coming and some that are rumored. Here is what I look forward to trying to evaluate in 2010:

  • Nokia N900 (in my hands now)
  • US-carrier version of HTC HD2
  • Windows Mobile 7 device(s)
  • New Google Android device(s)
  • New Apple iPhone device
  • New Symbian Foundation and Maemo 6 devices

What was your favorite mobile device of the year? I listed the top choices below, but if you have something different feel free to leave a Talkback. Also, what are you looking forward to in 2010?

Poll

What was your favorite smartphone of 2009?

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Matthew Miller started using a Pilot 1000 in 1997 and has been writing news, reviews, and opinion pieces ever since.

Disclosure

Matthew Miller

Matthew is a professional naval architect by day and a mobile gadget freak at all other times. He purchases his own devices and then sells them on eBay or Craigslist to buy more. Many other devices are sent for review on a 30-day loaner basis and then returned to the carrier or manufacturer. If any are provided as “long term loaner units” this will be clearly disclosed in his reviews.

Biography

Matthew Miller

Matthew Miller started using a mobile devices in 1997 and has been writing news, reviews, and opinion pieces ever since. He is a co-host with GigaOM's Kevin Tofel on the MobileTechRoundup podcast and an author of three Wiley Companion series books. Matthew started using mobile devices with a US Robotics Pilot 1000 and has owned over 125 different devices running Palm, Linux, Symbian, Newton, BlackBerry, iOS, Android, webOS, Windows Mobile, and Windows Phone operating systems. His current collection includes an HTC Radar 4G, Dell Venue Pro, Apple iPad 2, HTC Flyer, Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Nokia N9, Apple iPhone 4S, MacBook Pro, and many more, along with tons of accessories and classic devices like the Apple Newton MessagePad 2100 and Sony CLIE UX50. Matthew can be found on various discussion forums under the user name of "palmsolo".

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