Photos: Top 10 smartphones you could take a shine to
What's in your pocket?
While every man and his dog seems to be bringing out a smartphone at the moment, several devices stand out from the crowd. Here silicon.com rounds up the current crop of smartphone heavy-hitters - starting with Apple's iPhone 3G S, still the device all other manufacturers look to beat.
Apple's latest is known as the 3G S, with the S standing for speed, in the shape of a faster processor. It also has a better camera (3MP), a video recorder, a digital compass and even an anti-fingerprint coating on the screen for maximum shine.
Photo credit: Apple
Mobile maker Palm has been around for years and was making touchscreen phones before the iPhone was a twinkle in Steve Jobs' eye but the Pre is Palm's most eagerly anticipated phone for years.
It's not yet out in the UK but launched across the pond earlier this month. The Pre boasts a multitouch touchscreen, like the iPhone, along with a slideout keyboard in case you want to get physical.
The Pre runs its own Palm WebOS - Windows Mobile fans will have to look elsewhere.
Photo credit: Palm
Pictured here is the Magic, HTC's second Android device with a form factor to rival the sleek silhouette of the iPhone. Unlike HTC's first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1, the Magic does away with the physical keyboard, relying solely on its 3.2-inch touchscreen.
Photo credit: HTC/Vodafone
You'd be forgiven for thinking you're looking at the same phone as the previous page but this is actually the HTC Hero, the third Android device on offer from HTC but the first that also uses its own UI - called Sense.
The Hero also packs an iPhone-beating 5MP camera and, like Apple's latest iPhone, is clad in a shine-saving coating - which just goes to show how hardware makers are really having to push themselves to differentiate their wares these days.
The Hero will ship in Europe next month.
Photo credit: HTC
While Nokia may still be the world's biggest mobile maker, this recent offering, the N97, in the smartphone space has drawn mixed reviews, with complaints about its unresponsive touchscreen and its relatively old OS, Symbian S60.
Even so, Nokia the brand is still a force to be reckoned with and this device packs all the usual suspects including a 3.5-inch, 16:9 touchscreen, a slideout Qwerty keyboard, GPS and 32GB of onboard storage.
Photo credit: Nokia
Another newbie offering from Nokia is the E72, pictured above, part of its Eseries of business-orientated phones. This is the follow up to its popular E71 - a device likely to appeal to those who like their smartphones to come in a more traditional format, sans touchscreen.
Photo credit: Nokia
Also running Symbian S60 OS is this device, the i8910HD from South Korean mobile maker Samsung, shunning the Windows Mobile OS used by its predecessor the Omnia.
As the HD in its name suggests, this device offers high def video capture, along with an eight-megapixel camera.
Photo credit: Samsung
Just in case you thought you'd made up your mind already, here's another high end piece of kit in the works from Samsung: the Pixon12. The dozen in its name refers to the camera, a massive 12-megapixels - the "world's first", apparently, and four times more impressive than the iPhone's.
The Pixon12 will arrive in the UK in Q3 of this year.
Photo credit: Samsung
And here's another in Samsung's pipeline due later this year - the Jet - which will sport an 800MHz processor, along with a touchscreen, GPS and a five-megapixel camera.
Photo credit: Samsung
But for those who like their smartphones to be served up Windows Mobile-style, HTC's Touch Diamond 2 could be just the trick. It has HTC's TouchFLO 3D user interface running atop Windows Mobile 6.1.
The next iteration of Microsoft's mobile OS - 6.5, announced at Mobile World Congress back in February - has yet to make an official device debut.
Photo credit: HTC