The phones of 2009, in 2010

This year has seen some astonishingly brilliant smartphones turn up on the market, already, and now it's time to find the best of the best, so far. Let's have a look at three of the earliest contenders for most incredibly phone of 2010.

Nokia N900

We start by looking at the most powerful smartphone in Finnish manufacturer Nokia's catalogue. Their newest smartphone is the first of its kind; it is the first handset ever to be powered by the open-source Maemo UI (heretofore seen in the Finnish manufacturer's selection of tablet computers). Give a warm welcome to the Nokia N900. That Maemo OS gives the Nokia N900 a touch friendly interface, and as well as that, the phone has an integrated QWERTY keypad, so it has more ways to access the phone than ever before. It's not solely about the interface, though, since the Nokia N900 is crammed with high-end features. A 5 megapixel camera lets you take superb photos, the multimedia player is stunning, and with HSDPA and GPS, the Nokia N900 certainly isn't short of connectivity options.

Motorola DEXT

Representing Android, there's the Motorola DEXT. The first important fact about the Motorola DEXT, and the bit that has made it so talked about, is its interface: Google Android, with MOTOBLUR riding on top. As it's the first Android phone to focus on social networking as its key feature, the Motorola DEXT has garnered an awful lot of trade and consumer interest. It's certainly more of a looker (especially in the interface, the newly designed MOTOBLUR UI) than previous Android phones, and that fusion of enhanced looks and the still-awesome power of Android makes the Motorola DEXT a very compelling phone indeed. If social networking is your thing, this is the phone for you.

HTC HD2

So, there is the Nokia N900 with that Maemo interface, and then you've got the Motorola DEXT, which features Android. And finally you've got the Windows Mobile contender, the HTC HD2; it holds the record for the largest display seen on a mobile phone. Coming in at a huge 4.3 inches, it is truly gargantuan, and the WVGA, 800x480 resolution makes it incredibly easy to interact with things such as scrollbars in menus. However, the HTC HD2 actually does a superb job of making it so you do not have to go into the normal Windows menus that much, since on top of the operating system, the UI is HTC's intuitive Sense UI, where you do everything through various finger swipes and sweeping gestures. It is truly intuitive, and it (as well as the lightning fast 1GHz Snapdragon CPU) is what makes the HTC HD2 such an unmitigated joy to use. Of course, it's not all about being raw processing power, a phone has to have compelling features and the HTC HD2 has them in spades, from the 5 megapixel camera, through GPS, to incredibly fast HSDPA internet access (not to mention the superb Opera Mobile web browser), which is why many people see it as the best mobile phone EVER.