This year was a busy one for the smartphone industry, with a lot of activity in both the Android and Windows Mobile camps.
What's best for users depends on whether you're a road warrior, busy executive, or occasional out-of-the-office worker. If apps are what matter to you, there's a wealth of options. If you've tired of full QWERTY hard keyboards, you can join the touch screen army. And, if you're after something with both brains and beauty, the mobile makers have clearly been listening in.
But which were our favourites arrivals of the past 12 months? Let the roll call of honours for our top smartphones of 2009 begin.
When the first generation iPhone burst onto the scene back in 2007 it caused quite a splash, even though it was missing a few vital ingredients.
Fast-forward to 2009 and the iPhone 3GS arrived, bringing with it an updated operating system that enabled copy and paste and much enhanced performance among other things.
It's still a beauty of a device and one that many continue to try and fail to emulate.
The HTC Hero was heralded as an iPhone killer and it has certainly swayed some users since it arrived on the scene back in August.
With an intuitive user interface and quirky design - you either love or hate the lip' - with this Android-based handset HTC served up something rather special for users.
A range of business centric and multimedia features are on offer, meaning this is a device that happily blends the worlds of work and play.
