Cell phone: Samsung Rant
 It isn't the most feature-packed phone on the market, but the Samsung Rant still managed to surprise and delight us in ways we didn't expect from this $50 QWERTY slider. The phone has Sprint's great new One Touch interface app, which gives a smartphone look to the interface, and it's also capable of checking corporate e-mail. But at its heart, its still an easy-to-use messaging phone, and one we find ourselves regularly recommending to folks who want advanced messaging features, but don't want all the complications, not to mention the expense, of a full-fledged smartphone.
Smartphone: T-Mobile G1
 In a time when everybody was confident that going solo was the key, the T-Mobile G1 has proved that collaboration between mobile companies is still a viable solution. And it proved this so powerfully that Symbian OS is jumping on the bandwagon to become open-source, and Microsoft's Windows Mobile licenses are one step away from being free. Google was the driving factor here, founding the Open Handset Alliance in cooperation with hardware suppliers, carriers, manufacturers, and service and software providers. The hardware may not be stellar, but with such an open architecture, the Android phone has the potential to be the smartest of them all.
Service: Apple App Store
 Surpassing 300 million applications downloaded already, Apple nailed it by offering an application catalog combining free and paid applications. When Steve Jobs first announced the original iPhone, widgets were lurking in the dark, but the mobile communities pushed the company into thinking outside the Apple headquarters. In a year when everyone else made a bet on widgets anyway, Apple rolled out its App Store for the iPhone and iPod touch and won over developers, and users, worldwide.
Technology: Kodak Imaging for mobiles
 When it became clear that Kodak was working on camera phone technology, and that Motorola was its first partner, speculation ran rampant as to what kind of impact this would have on the existing players. We got the answer with the Motorola Zine ZN5, and it had barely hit store shelves before Nokia announced that they had licensed all of Kodak's technology. It's nice to see underdog companies like Motorola and Kodak take the lead, and its even nicer to see the images this cameraphone, easily the best on the market, produces.
Network: Clearwire
 At the beginning of the year, we wouldn't have placed bets on a WiMAX roll-out in 2008, but today the new WiMAX network is now available in Baltimore. Of course we're enthusiastic simply because it's a newer, faster wireless network, but there's innovation here at every level. We like the new pricing schemes that Sprint and Clearwire are planning, which take into account ubiquitous networking and offer umbrella packages for all your devices. For now, the company has a short window of opportunity, as competitor's 4G LTE networks are still deep in the testing phase, so hopefully we'll see Clearwire expand quickly into some key markets and we'll see Sprint offer a new range of devices and services to take advantage of the new found speed. Besides, Motorola and the other WiMAX players are clearly looking to start earning some of their massive investment back.
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