Nokia’s first mass produced touch screen smartphone that featured the Symbian 5th Edition OS.
The Nokia 5800 was highly successful around the world, including the U.S.
It is very inexpensive and for the price you pay, you get the most bang for your buck in both feature and function.
.
.
- @ Number 4
Ah yes! The Nokia E51! This was my favorite smart phone for a very long time! I still appreciate its simple elegance!
This phone was the best you can get without a qwerty thumbpad or touchscreen.
This phone is still out on sale and is very well worth the price that you pay.
.
.
- @ Number 3
The Nokia 5730. This is the Nokia E75′s cooler, more ‘hip’ sibling. I enjoyed the Symbian 3rd Edition OS that came with this phone because it was the first non-touchscreen phone to sport the Contact Bar and not only that, had all the Xpress Music features in a full horizontal slide-out qwerty keyboard.
This phone still holds its own among the other smart phones. It has a couple of advantages over it’s more ‘elegant’ sibling (E75) in that it has a couple of things the E75 lacked, a built-in digital compass and more installed RAM.
.
.
- @ Number 2
What more is there to say? Apple’s 800 lb gorilla in the cellphone industry. No other company can match its software application distribution model and ease of use (Android Market is close). No other company can rival its sheer volume of available applications.
This Apple manufactured phone is the Game Changer in the cell phone world. Most other manufacturers are currently trying to recuperate and play catch up with them to this day.
.
.
- And @ Number 1
The HTC Hero! Although its hardware and software tech is outdated, it still ‘just works’. It is the phone that is nearest to perfection for size and software/hardware integration. It is not too small, nor is it too big. It fits perfectly in the hand and is large enough to read text and use for media consumption; but yet small enough to easily operate with one hand. The HTC Sense UI makes a world of difference with this phone which uses Android OS version 1.5 (Cupcake). This is the phone that the iPhone should have been and Apple knows it. Expect an update to Android 2.1 along with the latest version of the Sense UI.
.
Honorable Mentions:
- Honorable Mention 1
Palm’s first phone with its new WebOS, the Palm Pre.
Palm bet the farm on this handset and some would even say that they lost almost everything in the process. Sprint, while one of the bigger carriers in the U.S., was also a CDMA carrier. This hurt the Palm Pre’s chances of being widely accepted globally and by other customers on larger GSM networks such as AT&T and T-Mobile.
.
- Honorable Mention 2
.
Palm’s second WebOS device, the Palm Pixi. While we all claim to be mature individuals; the name still tickled our fancy and made it hard for the general population to ‘take it seriously’. I personally would love to have this phone because it is in one of my favorite form factors. It’s perfect in that it has a decent sized capacitive touchscreen married to a very nice qwerty thumbpad. As with the HTC Hero, it is not too big and not too small.
.
I hope to see Palm either make a come back, or join forces with either HTC; or at the very least, license its WebOS to other hardware manufacturers.
So there you have it, as of this date, these are my Top 5 phones with the honorable mentions.
Feel free to leave a comment with your feedback about this or share your personal favorites.
