Beats the iPhone on music and photography
Nokia X6, £400 without contract
This is the first Nokia with a fast, capacitive touchscreen - technology that responds to a delicate swish rather than a jabbing finger, as found in the iPhone. It is comfortably sized and runs Symbian, the familiar Nokia operating system. Included in the price (the phone is also available free on a £40-a-month two-year contract with Orange) is a year-long deal that allows you to download as many tracks to the phone as you like from the Nokia music store - yours to keep once the year is up. With 32GB of memory on board, that's a lot of tunes - although you can't expand the memory. Like the HD2 and Milestone, the camera is a five-megapixel model and was the best on test, thanks to powerful software, minimal shutter lag and a decent Carl Zeiss lens.
Verdict Beats the iPhone hands down for its camera, with the music deal a great bonus.
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Beats the iPhone on screen quality
HTC HD2, free on contract
The HD2 is based on the new version of Windows Mobile, on top of which runs HTC's appealing Sense software. It's the first Windows phone with a capacitive screen, which at 4.3in is excellent for viewing photos and videos. The biggest handset on test (the Milestone is heavier), it still has only a virtual keyboard, but excellent error correction makes text entry simple. A powerful chip helps apps to run smoothly and speedily. Widely available on contract, starting at £30 a month.
Verdict The best screen on test, but any task that does not involve Sense takes you into the less attractive world of Windows.
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Beats the iPhone on email
BlackBerry Bold 9700, free on contract
The iPhone's virtual keyboard is quick and accurate, but if you are unwilling to give up on a real keypad, the BlackBerry's is the best there is. The well-spaced keys benefit from guitar-fret ridges between the rows - useful for keeping fingers on track. The 2.5in screen is vivid and sharp, though too small for easy web surfing. BlackBerry's email handling remains the best of any smartphone, but the 9700's other software can be hard to use.
Verdict Well built, reliable and great with email - but the screen is too small.
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Beats the iPhone on pocketability
Palm Pre, free on contract
The touchscreen and its software are as slick as Apple's and support similar pinch-and-zoom finger-gesture commands. The Pre is much more compact than the iPhone, but still has a 3.1in screen and a slide-out keypad, which is not as easy to use as a BlackBerry's but functional. Email and Facebook notifications appear discreetly at the bottom of the screen as they arrive - handy if you're in a meeting or at the cinema. Its sparse app store is a disappointment, but expect new software to start appearing soon. Currently available with O2 only, with contracts starting at £34 a month.
Verdict Petite and adept at pulling together social network contacts; but fun apps are few.
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Beats the iPhone on Googling
Motorola Milestone, £50 on contract
This is the closest thing yet to a Googlephone, running its Android operating system and supporting one-touch and voice-activated Google searches. It has a slide-out keypad, although the flat, awkward keys are not as good to use as the sharp 3.7in touchscreen, which supports iPhone-like finger gestures. British drivers get 60 days' use of Motorola's sat nav software - a poor substitute for the Google Navigation that US users enjoy. The 5Mp camera is poor for stills, better for video. Available tomorrow on a £35-a-month tariff.
Verdict Powerful, but the keypad is poor.
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ALSO CHECK...
Multiple applications With the exception of playing music and receiving calls, the iPhone can do only one thing at a time. All other handsets on this page will run multiple applications - displaying weather updates while grabbing email and instant messages, for example.
Battery life Smartphones require daily recharges, but only the iPhone's battery is locked in place. All the others can be swapped for a fully charged spare.
Ease of use This is where the iPhone excels - the handset can be used without a glance at the manual, and is exceptionally slick in operation. Only the Palm Pre comes close to matching it.
Apps Add-on applications have become the heart of any smartphone, and the iPhone's app store has 100,000 of them - more than three times as many as any rival. It's hard to imagine other stores catching up for years, if ever.
Additional reporting: Mark Harris