Nokia C3

The Nokia C3 is a budget version of the popular E71 and E72 BlackBerry lookalikes. What a great idea! A BlackBerry Curve for the price of a budget Pay as you Go phone! And in many ways the C3 delivers on its promise. It's certainly a smart looking phone. Plasticky, yes, but what did you expect at this price? The keyboard works well and the phone feels good in the hand.

The TFT display has been built to a budget, but it's no worse than the screen on the BlackBerry 8520. It has the same size and resolution (2.4 inches, 320 x 240 pixels). The camera's about as basic as you can get these days, so don't expect much from that. The phone does have an MP3 player, of course, and an FM radio, but pretty much every phone does these days. Don't look for GPS or 3G, because you won't find any high-end features on the C3.
There is one area where the C3 over-delivers, however, and that's connectivity. Not only does it have Bluetooth and USB, but it's also Wi-Fi enabled and has a 3.5mm audio jack too. The Wi-Fi could be handy for accessing the internet on your phone. The C5 has Facebook and Twitter apps that can be accessed from your home screen, but don't expect to do a lot of web browsing on such a small screen.

Battery life is truly excellent, with a very meaty 1320 mAh battery, and not too much work for it to do. Compared to high-end smartphones the C3 is like the Duracell Bunny! It's not so hot when it comes to memory though, with only 55MB onboard and no memory card included in the sales package. You'll need to spend a little extra to add a microSD card.
The C3 is very much a phone built to a budget. It's key selling point is the QWERTY keyboard and the fact that it looks like a BlackBerry. It does email well, has great battery life and has Wi-Fi. If that's what you're looking for, then you've found your perfect phone. If you want 3G or a high quality camera, then you need to spend more cash!

LG KP500 Cookie

The LG KP500 is nicknamed the Cookie. It's billed as an affordable touchscreen phone and in fact there are some amazing deals out there to tempt you. But before you rush off to buy one, join us in a tour of the Cookie, and let's find out what's missing compared to the more expensive rival touchscreen phones.

Let's start by looking at what you do get. You get a genuine touchscreen-driven phone (not just one with touch-sensitive buttons) that is controlled by pressing virtual buttons and icons with your finger or the stylus that's supplied with the phone. Pioneered by the iPhone (and others), touchscreen is the hottest trend in mobile phones in 2009, and it's hard to underestimate the amount of fun that you can have pressing virtual buttons on a screen. Especially for people like us, who don't get out enough. In the early days touchscreen phones were often tricky to use, but these days they're all pretty easy once you've got used to them. We don't think that the Cookie will pose any trouble, although some may find the stylus a nuisance. Anyway, great fun to use! The KP500 also has a built-in accelerometer, which simply means that it senses which way is up and automatically rotates the display. The virtual QWERTY keyboard slides into view when you turn the phone to landscape mode, which looks very cool. The accelerometer is also used when playing games, so you can tilt and turn the phone Wii-style to control movement. You can shake and flip the phone at other times to control various functions. It's all great fun, as long as you don't mind being stared at by passers-by.

The Cookie is more compact than most touchphones. It's about 20% smaller than the iPhone 3G and several millimetres thinner than its big brother, the LG Renoir. And weighing just 89g, it's probably the lightest touchscreen phone ever. We can't think of any lighter ones off the top of our head anyway. But, and this bit is important, LG have cleverly made the phone smaller without reducing the size of the screen. At 3 inches across, it's a big display by any standards, and when it comes to touchscreen, size really does matter! A bigger screen makes it easier to use, and the Cookie is definitely an easy phone to use.

So, the ergonomics are good, and the screen is good. What else is good? Well, it has a media player that plays most popular digital music formats. It also has a stereo FM radio. It's got a good web browser. It supports email and has a document viewer installed. Connectivity includes USB and Bluetooth, and the operating frequency is quadband GSM, so you should be able to use the phone anywhere in the world.

Now let's take a look at what's missing.

The camera is not as good as the 5 or 8 megapixel cameras seen in LG's high-end phones. It's limited to 3.2 megapixels, and there's no autofocus but this is reasonable when you consider the price. The memory is also more limited at 48 MB, although you can add a microSD memory card to bring this up to 8GB. It's not 3G and there's no WiFi, so web browsing probably isn't a good option, despite the big screen, which is a shame.

Inevitably there are trade-offs between price and features. We feel that LG have got the balance just right with the Cookie. By removing the features that most people won't miss, and by installing an average camera, they've not only slashed the cost, but have also made the phone more compact and easier to use in many ways. As long as you won't miss high speed web browsing or the camera quality, you can have all the benefits of the latest touchscreen phones for a fraction of the cost. For example, on contract you can expect to get the LG KP500 with half-price line rental for the duration of the contract, or a freebie such as a Nintendo Wii Fit, an XBOX 360 or even a couple of hundred quid cashback! With deals this generous, it's very hard to find fault with the Cookie.

The new Samsung Tocco Lite is an almost exact copy of the Cookie - there's little to choose between the two phones, except that our users seem to feel that the Tocco Lite is a more robust phone - the Cookie seems to annoy a few people with reported software glitches.

HTC Desire Z

So, if you take the most popular smartphone of 2010 and add a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, what do you get? Answer: an absolutely fantastic all-round stunning mobile.

And it really is that simple. HTC have taken the hardware and software of the Desire (a phone that we described as "the nearest we've ever seen to the perfect phone") and fitted a slide-out keyboard to the back. So, although the Desire Z is the same height and width as the Desire, it's a couple of millimetres thicker and about a third heavier, which might make it too big for some people's taste. But hey - look around you at all the people lugging their iPhone 4's and HTC Desire HD's around with them. Didn't you know, big is the new small?

The slide-out keyboard is great. It doesn't just slide out. It flips and folds into place with a nice action, and it's definitely a big plus for anyone who writes a lot of texts or emails on their phone. The 3.7 inch display is the same as the one used on the Desire, and responds brilliantly to the touch. The Desire Z runs Android 2.2 (Froyo) with HTC Sense, and we've commented many times before that this is the operating system of choice in 2010, being as easy to use as an iPhone, and with at least as much power under the bonnet, with a huge choice of apps. As this is more of a serious kind of phone, one app worth mentioning is Documents To Go, which lets you view, edit and create Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, plus view Adobe PDF files. The Desire Z supports Microsoft Exchange too, so is ideal as a business tool. YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are available too, of course, as well as an easy to use web browser.

As we mentioned, the Desire Z shares most of the same hardware as the original Desire, including a 5 megapixel camera, GPS receiver with digital compass, music player and FM radio. There's some more memory in the Desire Z: 1.5GB built-in, plus the capacity to take memory cards up to 32GB. The processor speed is slightly slower though (800 MHz for the Desire Z vs 1GHz for the Desire) and the battery is slightly smaller (1300 mAh vs 1400 mAh), which seems like a perverse decision. Let's be honest: you're going to have to charge the phone every day in all likelihood.

So, to conclude, if you want a smartphone with real muscle, and if you have the muscle to carry every gram of its stunning aluminium-clad body around with you, then of all the phones in the expanding Desire family, the Z is the one for you. Love it for its powerful OS, its gorgeous touchscreen, its keyboard and its mind-boggling choice of apps. Tolerate its bulk and its battery life. If its too big and you don't covert the keyboard, choice the original HTC Desire. If it's still not big enough, choose the HTC Desire HD. Whichever you choose, you want go far wrong with one of the Desires.

Blackberry Pearl 3G

A BlackBerry without a QWERTY keyboard! Whatever next? BlackBerry built their reputation on handsets that were brilliant for mobile email, so what's the point of one with an alphanumeric keypad? We're still scratching our heads.

The Pearl 3G is a compact smartphone targeted at ... um, who? It doesn't have a touchscreen, it doesn't have a big choice of apps, it doesn't have a QWERTY keypad, it doesn't have a good camera or media facilities. It does have Wi-Fi and GPS, but so what? Virtually every other smartphone in this price range has them too, and plenty more besides.

We're left wondering why anyone would want such a phone. OK, to be fair, it's compact and it's got an optical trackpad and SureType to help overcome the limitations of the keypad. But why not get the real deal instead? It's not like the Pearl 3G is a cheap option. Better choices are the BlackBerry Bold 9700, Nokia E72 or even the BlackBerry 8520.

Update: since we wrote our review, we've had feedback from Pearl owners telling us we're wrong (see below for a flavour of these.) Guess what: we're not going to change our review, because we haven't changed our opinion. But there's clearly a small but significant number of people who really, really like this phone. Please read the user reviews below to get a more balanced perspective.

Blackberry 9300 Curve 3G

OK, here's another BlackBerry to add to the mix. RIM are really churning out new models at a fast rate. The 9300 Curve 3G is a mid-range model - more expensive than the BlackBerry 8520, cheaper than the BlackBerry Bold 9700. And its capabilities, unsurprisingly, sit somewhere between these two models as well.

Physically, the device is almost identical to the 8520. In fact you'd be hard pressed to tell them apart. The full QWERTY keyboard isn't as polished as the Bold's, but it certainly beats the alphanumeric keypad of the Pearl 3G. As the name suggests, the Curve 3G takes the basic 8520 and adds 3G. Also added is a GPS receiver with BlackBerry Maps. So, read our review of the 8520 and decide if it's worth paying a little extra for these features. Or, read our Bold 9700 review and ask yourself if you should pay more still and get a better camera, a better display, more memory, a bigger battery and a superior keyboard. We'd recommend going the whole hog and treating yourself to the Bold 9700, but hey, it's not our money that we're spending!

Blackberry 9780

Precisely one year after the launch of the Bold 9700 comes the Bold 9780. On the face of it, not a lot has changed. The 9780 is exactly the same size and weight as the 9700 and looks almost identical. The features are almost the same, with some very minor hardware updates and the latest BlackBerry 6 operating system. But don't misunderstand us, we like the Bold 9780 very much. If the original is close to perfection, there's no need for revolutionary change: evolution is better.

You can read our review of the BlackBerry Bold 9700 to find out more about what the Bold can do. We're just going to comment here that the 9780 comes with more built-in memory (512 MB compared with 256 MB), has an uprated camera (5 megapixels instead of 3.2) and runs BlackBerry 6. This is a definite improvement, with improved ease-of-use and clearer menus. The email and web systems have been redesigned, with the new web browser offering full tabbed browsing. The BlackBerry email experience remains intact, with full support for corporate email accounts as well as gmail. The home screen is more customisable, and there are plenty of shortcuts and helpful features to enable you to do what you want more quickly. It's a welcome change, but won't cause existing BlackBerry users much trouble in adapting.
In summary, the Bold 9780 is definitely the best of the Bold series so far, but existing Bold users won't see a huge change from the Bold 9700. Still, if it's time to upgrade, then the 9780 is worth having. It's a very solidly built phone with a mature but refreshed operating system. It does the job brilliantly, with a fantastic QWERTY keyboard, outstanding connectivity and a whopping 1500 mAHr battery. You won't find a better business workhorse than the BlackBerry 9780.

Google Nexus S

The Google Nexus S: is it the best mobile phone ever released, or is it simply a re-branded version of the Samsung Galaxy S? Well, quite possibly yes, and yes. Let us explain.

On the face of it, the Nexus S is simply a Samsung Galaxy S with one or two modifications. The phone is made by Samsung, and it shares almost all the features of the Galaxy S. So, it's an Android smartphone with access to 100,000 apps. It's powered by a superfast 1GHz Hummingbird processor plus a dedicated GPU and 16GB of built-in memory. It has a 5 megapixel camera with autofocus and 720 x 480 pixels at 30fps video recording. It has GPS with Google Maps. It has a superfast internet connection with download speeds of up to 7.2 Mbps. It shares all these things with the Galaxy S. But in addition it has the latest release of Android (Gingerbread). The main camera has a flash too. So it's correct to say that the Nexus S and Galaxy S are very similar phones.

But it's also correct to say that the Nexus S is probably the best mobile phone ever released. Why? Because we described the Galaxy S as quite possibly the best phone on the market today, and that if it had a flash on its camera it would be perfect. And so we're prepared to stick our neck out and say that the Google Nexus S is (very, very nearly) the perfect phone.

Let's take a look at the operating system first. The Nexus S is the first phone to carry Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). Android was already a mature OS, but Gingerbread pushes the limits of what a smartphone can be, and takes us neatly into the world of the future, i.e. 2011. Android 2.3 is faster than previous releases (most operations have no visible lag whatsoever), and the user interface has been refreshed. There's an improved keyboard with multi-touch support, making typing faster, easier and more reliable. At mobile-phones-uk we're big fans of physical keyboards, but the functionality available here might even convert us! Copying and pasting is improved, with a new text selection tool. Other new features include enhanced VoIP communication, Wi-Fi hotspot support for up to six portable devices and Near Field Communication (NFC). NFC is an emerging technology that lets your phone read data from objects with NFC chips embedded in them.

Have we mentioned that the Nexus S is fast? Let's say it again, because it really is. Gingerbread is noticeably lag-free when using the user interface, and the combination of a superfast 1GHz Hummingbird processor plus a dedicated GPU and 16GB of built-in memory makes everything run super-smoothly. This is a phone that is genuinely capable of multi-tasking, as well as seamless playback of videos, rendering of graphics-hungry web pages and game playing. In itself, this smoothness is a good reason to buy the phone. Let's also mention the battery life, because with a 1500mAh lithium ion battery, this is the best performance you can reasonably expect from a smartphone. It may not last as long as your circa-2000 Nokia, but it will easily power the phone for a heavy day's use.
One of the outstanding features that the Nexus S has in common with the Galaxy S is its Super AMOLED display. At 4 inches across and with 480 x 800 pixels, this is a brilliant screen for a smartphone. It isn't quite the biggest (see the HTC Desire HD), but the amazing clarity and brightness of Super AMOLED easily makes up for this. Tell your iPhone-brandishing friends that its screen is 30% bigger than theirs, and brighter too!

The Galaxy S has one glaring omission, and that was a flash on the camera. The Nexus S has a 5 megapixel camera with flash and autofocus, plus 720 x 480 pixels video recording. It also has an additional front-facing camera that can take stills or shoot video in VGA resolution.
Other features of the Nexus S include a digital music player, assisted GPS with Google Maps 5.0 with Navigation and web browsing. The device comes pre-installed with Google apps such as Google Search, Google Maps 5.0 with Navigation (free turn-by-turn GPS voice guidance), Places (info about restaurants, places of interest, etc), Latitude, Mobile Instant, Gmail and Google Earth. Being a Google phone, the Nexus S will automatically update software over the air as it becomes available. Web browsing is fantastic and there's a YouTube app for watching videos. Facebook and Twitter are there of course, and integrate nicely with your Contacts. Just remember that this is a pure Android phone, lacking the refinements that manufacturers like Samsung and HTC layer on top of the raw operating system. But again, for many this could be its unique selling point, offering a purist experience without any baggage. You can always download an app for anything that's missing.
Connectivity options include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 with enhanced data rate, micro USB and a 3.5mm headphone jack.

Hey - did we mention that the Nexus S looks stunning? We were so busy being impressed by what it does, we forgot to tell you about its drop-dead looks! Whereas the first Google phone (the Nexus One) was a bit of a dog, the Nexus S is a supermodel by comparison. It has a gorgeously smooth glossy surface, with hardly any surface blemishes and a specially designed Contour Display with curved glass. The Contour Display is a gimmick for sure, but it adds to the smooth looks and tactile finish of the phone. Yes, we want to touch it, hold it, caress it. In fact we just want it, and you probably will too.
Is it the perfect phone? Well, it's not as nice in build as the iPhone 4, being slightly plasticky at the back, and it lacks a microSD card slot. But 16GB is surely enough memory? You can always find something to be picky about. The bottom line is that no phone is ever 100% perfect, but the Nexus S is so close that it deserves to be called the best.