The super-thin (8.49mm profile) Samsung Galaxy S II is an outstanding smartphone and one of the highest-scoring phones that we’ve ever tested. On the front of the phone is a large, 4.3-inch capacitive touchscreen display. This screen is based on Samsung’s new Super Amoled Plus technology. It is equipped with Android 2.3 and Samsung has chosen to customise Android with its own interface, TouchWiz 3.0, so it looks a little different from the standard Android experience.

The 8Mp autofocus camera performed well and the phone offers many camera features, including geo-tagging, by which the phone’s GPS records where your photos were taken. The video processor enables the phone to record 1080p HD video at an impressive 30 frames per second. There’s also a secondary 2Mp camera on the front for video calls.

Samsung has updated its Kies software and added a wireless option (Kies Air). This enables the phone to wirelessly sync with a computer using a wi-fi network, so you can backup important information. Battery life when online is pretty good. We were able to get three hours and 15 minutes.

The HTC Desire HD is a huge phone with a 4.3-inch display, which is great for watching videos and surfing the net. And with a resolution of 480×800 pixels it’s sharp and clear. Its powerful 1GHz processor keeps everything running smoothly, while the HSDPA (3.5G) and wi-fi connections provide fast web access. The huge touchscreen makes it easy to navigate around web pages and the battery lasted three hours online before we had to recharge it. It runs on the Android 2.2 and has customisable homescreens, offering excellent integration with all your Facebook, Twitter and email accounts.

HTC regularly modifies Android with its own interface, which it calls HTC Sense. The updated version of this Sense interface has features such as a unified email inbox for all your accounts and Smart Boot, which dramatically reduces turn-on times. The phone can also use HTCsense.com. This is a website that allows you to access your phone from your PC.

It’s equipped with a 1,230mAh battery and we were able to get five-and-a quarter hours of talktime when we tested the phone with medium reception levels. The call sound quality is not as impressive, however.

The LG Optimus 2X was the world’s first smartphone to include a dual-core processor. This means that it’s very fast and can support 1080p HD video recording. It runs on Android version 2.2 (also known as Froyo), which supports Adobe Flash, so you can watch Flash videos online.

LG is very excited about a feature it calls HD mirroring. Simply connect the phone to your TV using the HDMI-out and everything you see on the phone’s screen will be mirrored on your TV. This means that you can share photos and movies, show off your favourite websites and apps, and even play games using your phone as the controller.

You can playback full HD video thanks to the phone’s super powerful dual-core processor. In fact, the Optimus 2X is one of the first devices to arrive equipped with the new Nvida Tegra 2 mobile chipset. The Nvida dual-core processor offers smooth web page rendering and excellent on-board graphics handling. Also, the dual-core chip is lighter on the battery. We were able to get an outstanding over 6.5 hours of talktime from the 1,500mAh battery. Recharging takes two-and-a-half hours, which is quite fast.

This smartphone uses LG’s new Nova technology and is designed to be ‘the brightest, clearest and most readable among mobile screens’. Like the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc, it’s a super-thin phone that measures just 6mm at its thinnest point and 9.2mm at its thickest. It is also very light, weighing just 109g, and runs on the 2.2 version of the Android OS.

The Nova display should also reduce power consumption. LG claims that it uses 50% less power than a conventional LCD during general indoor use, and that it uses much less energy than an Amoled screen when displaying a full white background (the most frequently used colour scheme for web pages). There’s also an ambient light sensor to save even more power by dimming the display when maximum brightness isn’t necessary, such as when indoors.

These features, when combined with the large 1,500mAh battery, should ensure that you don’t have to plug in your phone charger many times throughout a typical day. Battery life on calls is impressive; we got 5.5 hoursof talktime from it, while recharging takes just a little over two hours.

The 3.7-inch capacitive touchscreen comes with an impressive resolution of 480×800 pixels. Its 1GHz processor helps it deal with Android Gingerbread (2.3). The phone has a large 1.1GB memory and comes with an 8GB microSD memory card (it can accept cards up to 32GB).

The HTC Desire S can surf the internet via wi-fi or HSDPA (3.5G). The touchscreen and Qwerty keyboard help with navigation, as does the ability to pinch your fingers to zoom into web pages. Battery life when online is a little disappointing. We got less than three hours of web browsing before we had to plug in our charger.

Its 1,450mAh battery gives just over four hours of talktime, which is about average. Recharging takes three hours and 13 minutes, which is slower than usual. Call quality is pretty good, especially when there’s no background noise, but outgoing calls aren’t quite as impressive.

This smartphone comes with a four-inch touchscreen and a Super LCD display with a resolution of 800×480 pixels. As with most HTC smartphones, the Incredible S runs on the Android operating system. This is powerful, gives you lots of options and is simple to set up and use. The large display helps with navigation and the touchscreen is responsive.

Inside the phone is a 1GHz processor, which is powerful enough to keep everything running smoothly. The Incredible S comes with a 1,450mAh battery. We managed to get just over four-and-a-half hours of talktime from it. Recharging takes three hours and 26 minutes.

The 8Mp autofocus camera performed well in our tests. Picture quality is good, especially when shooting outdoors. It can also record 720p video at 30 frames per second. There’s also a second 1.3Mp front-facing camera for video calls. This HTC phone also has an FM radio and an above average music player.

This is a wafer-thin Android smartphone that measures just 9mm at each end and curves to 8.7mm in the middle. It’s also very light, weighing only 117g. Remarkably, Sony Ericsson has managed to cram in a large 4.1-inch touchscreen with a resolution of 854×480.

The large, sharp touchscreen impressed our test team, who found it was very responsive and made the Arc easy to use – although the default wallpaper was a little busy and could be slightly distracting. When playing back multimedia content the picture quality also benefits from Sony’s Bravia Mobile Engine image-processing technology. Sony Ericsson says the Bravia system delivers optimal colour, contrast, noise and sharpness and it certainly produces impressive results.

The Arc’s camera is an 8.1Mp autofocus model with an LED photo light and can shoot 720p HD video at 30 frames per second.

As the first ever ‘PlayStation certified’ phone, gaming is very much the focus here. The Sony Xperia Play comes pre-loaded with up to seven games and you can access thousands of others, including original PlayStation versions, online. It has two shoulder buttons plus dedicated gaming controls that slide out, revealing a digital D-pad, two analogue touch pads and the four PlayStation icons: circle, cross, square and triangle. However, it’s more than just a gaming phone – it’s actually a well-equipped smartphone that runs on the very latest version of the Android OS (2.3). However, one downside of the gaming controls is that the phone is quite chunky, weighing 173g.

The phone is controlled by a large 4-inch capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 854×480. It is also equipped with a 1500mAh battery.

If you’re accident-prone or an adrenaline junkie, the Motorola Defy’s super-toughness could make it a good choice. It can be submerged into 1m of water, as it has been given an IP67 certification. It’s also shockproof and resistant to dust and dirt. Even the display is especially hardened, using extra-tough ‘Gorilla Glass’.

The 2.1 version of the Android OS is easy to use and gives you multiple home pages that you can customise with shortcuts and live feeds. Motorola has customised Android with its own interface, ‘MotoBlur’. You’ll need to register your email address when you first use the phone but it does have some handy features, including the ability to store all your data on Motorola’s own servers. The Defy also comes with a 5Mp camera.

The Wave II runs on Samsung’s own operating system, Bada (version 1.2). This may have helped to keep the price down (the Wave II is cheaper than Samsung’s Android-powered Galaxy S) but it does mean you’re restricted to using Samsung’s own app store.

The phone shone in our internet tests. Web pages loaded quickly thanks to the HSDPA (3.5G) and wi-fi connectivity and the 1GHz processor kept everything running smoothly. Text is easy to read on the large, sharp display and the touchscreen helps with navigation, especially the pinch to zoom function. We were also impressed with the 1500mAh battery, getting over five hours of talktime. Battery life online is above average. We were able to get three hours and 13 minutes of browsing. However, recharging is a little slow at three-and-a-half hours. Sound quality on calls dips when there’s background noise.

The Wave II has a 5Mp autofocus camera with LED flash and the picture quality is OK. The camera can also record in 720p, though not full HD like some of the latest smartphones.

The BlackBerry Torch manages to squeeze in both a touchscreen and the traditional BlackBerry keyboard. Both are easy to use, with the keyboard’s layout and spacing as usable as any BlackBerry keyboard.

It is the first handset to come with BlackBerry’s latest version of its operating system, BlackBerry OS 6, pre-installed. Key new features of OS 6 include a redesigned user interface with five homescreens and new icons that BlackBerry says are more intuitive, particularly for new BlackBerry users.

The phone is wi-fi and HSDPA (3.5G) enabled for fast web access. And we found that the combination of the touchscreen, trackpad and slide-out keyboard make it easy to navigate around web pages, especially as you can pinch-to-zoom. However, our tests also revealed that surfing the net drains the battery pretty quickly – we only got around two hours and 15 minutes of use from a full charge. The new BlackBerry OS 6 has an improved web browser that allows you to open multiple web pages on different tabs. You can also use the phone as a wireless modem for your laptop.

The LG Optimus 7 runs on the new Windows Phone 7 OS. It’s easy to use and the large tiles are far more finger-friendly than the old Windows Mobile’s tiny icons and endless menus. We also like the threaded SMS messages, where the phone displays sent and received messages together like a conversation. However, while Windows Phone 7 gives you lots of options, it does take time to get the hang of.

LG has added a few of its own features to the Windows Phone 7 operating system. The first of those is Play-To. This allows you to access pictures, video and music via any DLNA compatible device, so you can listen to the music on your phone through your favourite speakers or view your pictures on your TV. The Scansearch application utilises Augmented Reality technology to connect you to a wealth of information. Simply point the phone in the direction that you’re facing and the display will show what you can see while also adding in the information you’ve requested by using a database of places, GPS and the digital compass.

This Right Choice is a large, fairly heavy smartphone (139g) that runs on the Windows Phone 7 operating system. The 4-inch Super AMOLED screen is a little smaller than the 4.3-inch screen on the Windows-powered HTC HD7 (see p36), but image quality is still extremely impressive. It has a 480×800 pixel resolution touchscreen, a 1GHz processor and 8GB of internal storage.

The 1500mAh battery is larger than the 1230mAh battery in the HTC HD7 and the performance on calls is significantly better. We were able to get over six hours of talktime and recharging took three hours and 12 minutes, which is a little longer than average. Sound quality on calls is average.

The Omnia 7 has a 5Mp autofocus camera and it can also shoot 720p HD video. Both videos and photos look great on the large display. It comes with either 8GB or 16GB of memory, but there’s no memory card slot to increase this. It also has an FM radio and a decent music player.

Placing the antenna around the edge of the iPhone 4 has caused Apple a major problem. Despite initially denying that there was an issue, it later confirmed that the iPhone 4 can lose reception if held in a certain way. This means that it can’t always perform a phone’s most basic task – to make and receive calls. For this reason we can’t make it a Right Choice, despite its outstanding performance in our tests. Reception issues aside, the phone is extremely easy to use – there’s no need for a manual – and there’s a long-lasting battery. This gave a talktime of six hours and 12 minutes, up from five hours for the iPhone 3GS. The Safari web browser is excellent and the large touchscreen display makes it simple to move around web pages.

Pages load quickly thanks to the HSDPA (the equivalent of 3.5G) connection, and the phone is wi-fi capable for when you’re in a wireless hotspot. The iPhone 4 is powered by Apple’s A4 chip – the same kind of chip used in the iPad. This keeps everything running smoothly. The phone runs on Apple’s latest operating system OS4.

The iPhone 3GS is dominated by a large 7.5×5cm crystal-clear touchscreen. It can run the same OS as the newer iPhone 4, though it doesn’t offer the same front camera for video-calls.

The email system is easy to set up and operate, and the Safari web browser is as impressive. Web pages look great on the large display and are simple to navigate. A double tap lets you zoom in and you can rotate the iPhone sideways for a wide view.

Apple claims that the iPhone 3GS is much faster than its predecessor (the S stands for speed), due to a speedier processor and graphics chip. Our internet tests back up these claims – we were able to download a data-heavy web page in around half the time of the iPhone 3G. The battery gave between nine and ten hours of talktime on a non-3G network and six hours on the more power-hungry 3G network.

The music player – basically an iPod – is excellent and the iPhone battery lasts up to 40 hours when playing music.

The iPhone 4 is barely a year old, but already speculation is growing about its successor and its likely features. iPhone’s latest version, the iPhone 5, is due this month.

According to a report in Reuters, sources at Apple’s suppliers had said production of the iPhone 5 began in July this year and there is to be a likely release date in September in the United Kingdom.

These sources also claim that the iPhone 5 will have a similar design to the iPhone 4 – although it will include a faster processor.

Other leaks suggest that the fifth coming of the phone will launch in white and have a larger screen than previous models.

Some other reports have claimed that the iPhone 5 will be both lighter in weight and sport a thinner profile than the iPhone 4, and will perhaps feature an upgraded rear camera. The Wall Street Journal claims that it will contain new wireless chipsets manufactured by Qualcomm, which may make a single iPhone 5 handset compatible with GSM and CDMA networks around the world.

Apple has refused to comment on the iPhone 5.

Nokia has equipped the N8 with just about every gadget under the sun, and its new operating system, Symbian ^3 is an improvement on past efforts. The new OS feels more responsive and adds multiple homescreens with customisable widgets. There’s also multi-tasking and multi-touch zoom support in the browser, email and photo gallery.

The 3.5-inch touchscreen, virtual Qwerty keyboard and useful pinch-to-zoom controls help with navigation and it supports Flash so you can play rich online content. On the downside, surfing the net drains the battery quickly. We managed to browse for just two hours.

The Nokia N8 is equipped with an excellent 12Mp autofocus camera which can also shoot HD video at 25 frames per second. The mini-HDMI port means that you can plug the phone into your TV and play your videos on a bigger screen.

The music player also held up well in tests. Another big plus is the FM transmitter.