Best Phone Designs of the Year

CELL PHONES

» Coming soon
» Top 15
» Best-rated

LAPTOPS

» Coming soon
» Top 15
» Best-rated

CAMERAS

» Coming soon
» Top 15
» Best-rated

REVIEWS

» Cell phones
» Cameras
» Camcorders

» Archive	» Resource Center
» Compare	» Expert guides
» RSS & Alerts	» Ask The Editors

	Home / Cell phones / infoSync 2008 Awards

	Best Phone Designs of the Year	By Philip Berne, 19 December 2008

We judge these books by their covers and look back at our favorite phone designs of 2008.

Business smartphone: Nokia E71

Nokia had been neglecting their business lineup to favor the Nseries multimedia phones, but that changed in 2008 with the Nokia E71. This phone isn't just packed with business-savvy messaging features, it's also a great looking phone, perhaps the coolest design Nokia has produced in, well, ever. The phone is super-slim, while competitors like the Samsung Epix are getting thicker every year. Plus, it has a great QWERTY keyboard. We'd love to see the Symbian S60 OS get a serious kick in the pants, but overall the Nokia E71 was the coolest smartphone design of 2008.

Touchscreen phone: RIM BlackBerry Storm 9530

Love it or hate it, there's no denying that RIM was trying something unique and interesting with the click-through touchscreen on the BlackBerry Storm 9530. When it worked well, we loved it, as it solved plenty of problems with scrolling through long lists on a touchscreen phone. We even liked the software keyboard, and didn't mind the extra physical effort when it paid off with extra accuracy. It's more of a departure from the stodgy old RIM pager-style OS than we've seen on any other BlackBerry phone, and it breaks new ground in the touchscreen phone space. That's why the BlackBerry Storm is our favorite touchscreen phone design.

Consumer QWERTY phone: LG Lotus

There's a new form-factor in town, and its very wide. The LG Lotus led the charge of these compact mirror-sized phones, and it was certainly the best of the bunch. The Samsung Propel and the Verizon Wireless Blitz felt like cheap playthings compared to the LG Lotus' classy tattooed shell. Plus, the addition of the Sprint One Touch interface app makes this the most capable consumer QWERTY phone in its class. We'd like to see the price come down, as its hovering well into smartphone territory, but its still cool and capable enough that we have no problem recommending the LG Lotus as our favorite consumer QWERTY phone design.

Rugged phone: Casio G'zOne Boulder

First, we have to give proper respect to the Samsung Rugby, a phone so rugged we hit it with a motorcycle . . . twice (hit the link for slow-mo video). But for a rugged phone design, we were even more impressed with this year's update to the Casio G'zOne family on Verizon Wireless. The Verizon Wireless G'zOne Boulder is a sturdy phone, but it has some outdoor style, too. We liked the compass feature, a nice addition on a rugged phone, and other design features like the bubbly external screen and the completely waterproof shell. Both of these phones are great for users who abuse their phones horribly, but we just preferred the Boulder's look and feel.

Music phone: Nokia 5310

There are plenty of feature-rich multimedia phones on the market with flashing lights and cool tricks, like the Sony Ericsson W760 or the Sanyo Katana Eclipse, but what ultimately drew us to the Nokia 5310 was its razor sharp focus on music. It would be enough to compliment the phone for its 3.5mm headphone jack, it's included 1GB of microSD memory or the other software and accessories. But what we really like is that when we press the play button, the music starts, and that's the way a music phone should work.