We take an in-depth look at the best cell phones on the market, including models by Sony Ericsson, Nokia, LG, Samsung and Motorola.
If you're looking to invest in one of the latest and greatest cell phones money can buy, some of the best phones of 2008 are still worth considering. That said, there are also several 2009 releases that have impressed us during testing. For those who are looking for quality in specific aspects of a phone, we recommend checking out our new search engine here. Anyway, here are the 15 best cell phones right now:
The Sony Ericsson W995 gets things right in a few key ways that its primary competitors miss. As an unlocked multimedia super-phone, the real competition for the Sony Ericsson W995 is Nokia's Nseries, and in terms of the Walkman music player with the Media Go software, the W995 proves itself a capable Walkman (to check out recent Sony Ericsson Walkman phones, click here). Since it isn't a smartphone, Sony Ericsson can keep a clean menu design in a way that Nokia cannot. In addition to the music features, the phone also gets Web browsing and Wi-Fi, but though the speeds are impressive, the Access Netfront browser found in this phone isn't. We think the 8.1-megapixel camera is overkill though, and image quality can't compete with Nokia's best offerings, like the Nokia N85.
Besides some quirks and strange choices, the Nokia 5800 is actually a nice phone. Calls sounded good, and battery life was strong. The phone has solid music, video, Web browsing and GPS features, and even though none of these are exceptional, they're all robust and quite capable compared to other multimedia phones out there. On the other hand, we had hoped to see a more polished interface design, better camera and an overall multimedia performance that could match the N series smartphones, but it seems like we'll have to wait and see if the Nokia N97 can work some real magic there. In our opinion, Nokia also needs some new ideas about finger controls. Attaching two different styli to the phone just won't cut it, especially when remembering that Windows phones with only one stylus attached are already in trouble.
The LG enV Touch is certainly a superior device compared to the LG Voyager, even though the new phone lacks V Cast Mobile TV. Instead, the enV Touch gets 2 high-resolution displays (hint: one's still better than the other), a slew of multimedia and messaging features, and enough power to show off those big displays with fancy video playback and Web browsing with Flash Lite. We'd have liked to see some new ideas from Verizon Wireless for this phone to give it advanced access to the online social networking services that are most popular with this phone's potential audience. Still, if you're looking for something different, a solid phone all around with a great screen (or two), the LG enV Touch gets the job done nicely.
The Nokia Surge is something of an ugly duckling among the inexpensive, full-QWERTY messaging phone set. Actually, it's not even that ugly, and with its Symbian S60 smartphone OS, it's definitely more swan than duck. If you skip the junk that AT&T has piled onto this phone, you're left with a powerful device with business-class e-mail, contacts and calendar sync, a respectable, full-HTML Web browser and suite of multimedia options that were capable of handling our basic music and video needs. We loved the keyboard. It's our new favorite among compact messaging phones, and even though the aging Symbian interface doesn't compare to new-fangled, top-of-the-line smartphones, it still outclasses other, simpler messaging devices by a mile. We wish the phone had more built-in options for our favorite messaging addictions, like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, but that Symbian S60 OS means an intrepid user will find third-party options available. In the end, some messaging fans might prefer a friendlier QWERTY feature phone like the LG enV3 on Verizon Wireless or the LG Lotus on Sprint, but the Nokia Surge is the best compact messaging phone on AT&T's lineup, and a solid choice all around.
The LG Versa is a very nice phone, both unique and well-designed. The interface is snazzy and modern, with plenty of cool ideas and useful shortcuts that make it a pleasure to use. It's a definite step up from the problematic LG Dare. Unfortunately, it seems that while LG was doing so much work to create a great phone, Verizon Wireless sat on their laurels, and the phone is saddled with some of the worst messaging, navigation and music apps in the industry. It's too bad, as there is so much potential for the cool modular design. We're excited to see how far LG and Verizon Wireless can extend the selection of modules, and we're hoping for unique ideas that add value to the phone and push it beyond its competitors. But based on the Verizon apps we found on the phone, its more likely The Network will take the easy way out and end up disappointing early adopters. Our verdict: wait and see if this platform takes off or if VZW treats it like the magical phone that lives under the stairs.
The Nokia 5310 XpressMusic is a music phone that makes us happy for a number of reasons. This isn't an iPhone competitor, which makes sense, considering the low, $50 price tag. But it is far better than most other so-called music phones on the market, and includes many features that should set the standard. We like the 3.5mm headphone jack, the included 1GB memory card, and the two-stage stereo headphones a microphone. We also liked this phone for regular calling, and found call quality and even its messaging capabilities were surprisingly good. There are phones at four times this price that don't have all these features, and though the phone lacks 3G networking and the accompanying services, when we focused simply on the music abilities, we were happy with what we heard.
Like the original, the new Samsung Instinct S30 is supposed to go toe-to-toe with the iPhone as an easier, feature-rich alternative. In some ways, it still holds up. Sprint's 3G network has been faster than AT&T's network in our tests. The Samsung Instinct S30 has great turn-by-turn GPS navigation, a feature the Apple iPhone 3G lacks. But while Apple's device has exploded with extra apps and possibilities, the Samsung Instinct family has remained stagnant, falling behind competition even from Samsung itself on other carriers. The Instinct S30 may look better than its predecessor, but it needed to see improvements in the camera, the music and video player, and even in the messaging apps to remain compelling. We like the Work E-mail app that let us check in with our Microsoft Exchange accounts, but this feature is a nice bonus on the Instinct, while multimedia is much more important. As the top of Sprint's multimedia phone range, the Samsung Instinct S30 is a good phone, but not as good as it easily could have been.
The LG Lotus is about as smart as a phone gets before we call it a smartphone, thanks mostly to Sprint's excellent new One Touch menu application. Despite its haunting resemblance to a compact makeup mirror, we even like the form factor, as it provides a nice, comfortable QWERTY keyboard and keeps a classy look. The external screen is unfortunately an afterthought, even with the dedicated music keys, and call quality could have been much better. But for dedicated messaging fans, even those with corporate e-mail to read, this phone provides an interesting alternative to the more complicated smartphone set. Plus, with access to Google Docs, a capable (though not desktop-grade) Web browser and tethered modem support, maybe this phone is even smarter than we thought. Knock $100 off the price, and we'll take two.
The transition from the LG VX8550 Chocolate 2 to the LG Chocolate 3 is kind of like moving from middle school to high school. It's time to be a little less goofy and rambunctious, and instead get serious. In some ways, especially in terms of the music features like the 1GB of onboard memory and the FM transmitter, we like the more grown-up Chocolate. But we miss the dancing lights and fun interface of the original phone, even if it was a bit harder to use and less organized. In making the leap, the phone has settled nicely into the mid-range of 3G multimedia phones, but it has lost a lot of personality in the process. Still, this is Verizon Wireless' most capable mass market phone to date, and perhaps even the best mass market phone in general to be had right now.
Of all the compact QWERTY phone designs, we like the LG enV model the best, with its small but useful external screen and its roomy internal keyboard and display. The phone was a bit thick and chunky but it was so comfortable to use, with large keys inside and out, that we hardly noticed its size. The new LG enV3 is even better than its predecessors, with its ability to download and sync corporate e-mail and contacts, its improved call quality and multimedia experience, especially in video. It isn't perfect, as the Web browser and the 3-megapixel camera left us disappointed, but there are more advanced phones for those features. The messaging apps could also use an update to bring SMS into the modern age, but overall this is a very likeable phone, and easy to recommend to folks who want a compact texting machine with a few clever extras onboard.
The Samsung Impression is probably the most advanced feature phone in AT&T's current lineup, and its one of the few phones on the markets with the brilliant, colorful AMOLED screen technology. For calling, media playback and even Web browsing, we found the apps to be very touch friendly, though not too advanced. The keyboard is a nice addition, but the phone lacks most of our favorite messaging options. Mostly, we wish that there were better video playback options to truly take advantage of the impressive screen. Still, the phone was fun to use, and some features came through for us. The camera was better than we expected, and pictures looked great on the 3.2-inch display. Also, GPS performance was good, and we liked being able to geotag those pics. Overall, the Samsung Impression is the best feature phone we've tried on AT&T, but we wish the carrier would go farther with messaging and Web browsing options and let these feature phones live up to their full potential.
The Samsung Highnote would be a much better music phone if the musical features were truly something special. The music player needs a serious upgrade, and considering this is the only slide-out speakerphone on the U.S. market, the speaker should have been something truly impressive, a replacement for our mini speakers and travel alarm clocks. Instead, the phone gets the same music apps as every other Sprint Power Vision phone, and the speaker is comparable to, and not better than, many other music phones on the market. Kudos to Samsung for finally adopting a standard microUSB port, 3.5mm headphone jack and packing in a gigabyte of memory, but competitors, including arch-nemesis Nokia, has been doing this for years. We also think Samsung should have followed Nokia's lead with some real playback controls, since this is a music phone, after all. Still, besides these shortcomings, Sprint's One Touch menus make this phone competitive, with great shortcuts and a modern look to the interface. But if you're looking for a phone with some music power, strangely that's one area where it just doesn't stand out.
We're sure that Sprint and Samsung will forgive us for thinking this phone was a rip-off of the older LG Rumor, because after some time using the Samsung Rant we're ready to recommend it to anyone looking for a fun, easy-to-use QWERTY phone with some surprisingly robust messaging options. This isn't a complex, corporate smartphone, it's still very much a consumer-level device, but if you'd like to be able to check your work e-mail on your little personal phone, it packs all those features at the best price. Sprint's One Touch interface, with all its shortcuts and included apps, makes this phone much smarter than the average bear. We think the combination of improved hardware and interface design, the nice selection of messaging features, the great price, plus a few multimedia functions thrown in at the end for good measure, makes this an easy phones to recommend. There's plenty of room for improvement, but for only $50, we wouldn't want this phone to get too smart, would we?
The Sony Ericsson C905 is a phone that takes pictures that look fantastic, perhaps better than any other cameraphone we've seen so far. Unfortunately, that's about the only thing it does very well. For people who want to take print-worthy shots without carrying an extra camera, the Sony Ericsson C905 is a perfect fit. In terms of other features, it does an adequate job, especially in text messaging and GPS Navigation. But for a high-end phone, we were let down by the lack of a decent Web browser, and we were frustrated by the video playback that made our videos look foggy and poor. It's too bad AT&T is selling this phone without the included headphones and memory stick micro, as these proprietary formats are expensive, and a few features rely on these accessories to work properly. Still, cameraphone fans have found their king shooter at the top of the carrier pile, and AT&T has fired its latest shot in the burgeoning megapixel phone wars.
The Motorola Zine is a phone that would be a good replacement for your low-end point-and-shoot camera, and that's the nicest compliment you can pay a cameraphone. It's a good phone, a pretty good camera, and a surprisingly capable multimedia and Web browsing device. The camera takes real, good-quality pictures, helped along by some agile post-processing, and we even enjoyed the full-size 8 by 10 inch prints we made directly from the device. Kodak et al. don't quite deliver on their promise of easy uploading, and we had trouble sending and managing our pics, probably caused by the phone's buggy OS, which was sluggish some times, and completely unresponsive at others. Still, if you can manage your own pics, and you're looking for a casual shooter that's also a fine phone, the Motorola Zine is a great choice.
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