From low price to high power - the best Android phones

As Android has evolved, Google's mobile OS has turned up in more or less every market niche out there, from 'beginner' to super-powered smartphones. Let's take a look at the best Android mobiles that you can currently buy in each niche.

Sony Ericsson X10 Mini

We kick off by taking a look at a mobile for people who would like to get a smartphone, but hate the idea of a big smartphone or a phone that costs a lot to buy: the Sony Ericsson X10 Mini. As you can tell from the phone's name, the Sony Ericsson X10 Mini is a shrunken iteration of the original X10. The manufacturer has taken the good stuff the X10, and compressed it down into a brand new shell which makes the Sony Ericsson X10 Mini, especially since it is a smartphone, incredibly little. Thus, for users who want a smartphone that is little enough to squeeze into the smallest pockets, the Sony Ericsson X10 Mini is the phone to go for.

HTC Wildfire

Android is trying to dominate the mid-range, too, and it can now be found the gorgeous HTC Wildfire. It has the same cool bits that made its big brother (the HTC Desire) good, but places all that good stuff in a smaller, cheaper frame, that manages to remain both slick and sexy. Of course, being in the new mid-range frame means that the HTC Wildfire doesn't have the 1GHz Snapdragon chip of the Desire, but it still performs beautifully. It also comes with the Sense UI, installed on top of Android in the HTC Wildfire, yet again like its older predecessor. Based around those reasons, if you want a handset that isn't far off the Desire in terms of specs, but which is considerably cheaper, then the HTC Wildfire is the right choice.

Samsung Galaxy S

So, you've got the Sony Ericsson X10 Mini with its tiny shell, and then you've got the HTC Wildfire, the mid-range sibling to the HTC Desire. And finally you've got the the uber-powerful beast, the Samsung Galaxy S, which has also got the largest screen of any phone on this list. Weighing in at a whopping 4 inches, it is quite frankly vast, and the WVGA, 800x480 resolution means that it is genuinely easy to use things such as scrollbars in menus. On top of the underlying operating system, the interface is built around Samsung's TouchWiz UI. It is wonderfully simple to use, and while it isn't as sublime (but then, what is?) as HTC's Sense UI, it ( along with the unbelievably fast 1GHz Hummingbird CPU) is the biggest reason why the Samsung Galaxy S is such an unmitigated joy to use as your everyday phone. Of course, it's not solely about raw processor grunt, a phone needs to have exciting features and the Samsung Galaxy S has a wealth of cool features, from the 5 megapixel camera, through GPS, to incredibly fast HSDPA internet access ( and, of course, Google's incredible WebKit browser), which is why many customers say that the Galaxy S is one of the coolest mobiles on the market.