Gearburn’s top mobile phones of 2011

It’s been a dramatic year for the mobile phone industry. Nokia leaped from a burning platform to became hesitantly convalescent with Microsoft’s aid. Google breathed new life into a floundering Motorola Mobility. RIM continued to bleed with its shares losing more than 70% of their value this fiscal year alone. Apple lost its visionary CEO, while HP killed its WebOS phones, and almost canned WebOS entirely, deciding at the last minute to Open Source it.

Amidst all of this, just about every major handset manufacturer was tied up in some form of patent litigation, and topping it all off, Japan’s 8.9 magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami threatened to severely disrupt NAND flash production.

It’s quite a miracle then, that handset manufacturers still managed to produce some of the best phones to ever grace our planet.

Here’s Gearburn’s definitive Top 10.

10. BlackBerry Bold 9900

The Bold 9900 is the most exciting BlackBerry to come out of Waterloo since the original Bold 9000. Combining a touchscreen and a keyboard in the iconic BlackBerry form factor, it’s the best BlackBerry RIM has ever produced. It’s also one of the last BlackBerrys to run a version of the aging BlackBerry OS — OS 7 in this case. RIM will focus exclusively on pushing out QNX-based BBX BlackBerry 10 devices next year.

9. Samsung Galaxy Note

It’s a rare occurrence that a device creates such a divide. People either love or hate the Galaxy Note, but Samsung’s small tablet, or large phone, simply can’t be ignored. Personally, I wonder what’s not to love. It has a gorgeous 1280×800 5.3-inch Super AMOLED PenTile display with a very respectable 285ppi pixel density. Typing on such a large screen means that you’re likely to more consistently hit the right keys, but if the mood takes you, you can forgo the keyboard entirely and scribble instead, thanks to the S Pen.

8. HTC Titan

The Titan is arguably the best Windows Phone on the market at the time of writing. It has excellent build quality, brilliant camera and large display that makes typing a joy. Sadly the large display is a 480×800 WVGA panel which means pixel density is a meagre 198ppi. Still, as far as Windows Phone handsets go, you’d be hard pressed to find something more beautiful.

7. HTC Sensation

HTC launched a full out assault on the Galaxy S II with a triumvirate consisting of the Sensation, Sensation XE and the Sensation XL. Although there are things about both the XE (Beats Audio) and XL (large display) to love, the standard Sensation offers excellent value for money and has the same longevity as the XE and XL thanks to a clear Ice Cream Sandwich roadmap.

6. HTC Rezound

The Rezound is HTC’s emphatic answer to Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus. Available exclusively on Verizon’s LTE/CDMA network and one-upping the Nexus with a better display (standard RGB matrix, higher pixel density), an 8 megapixel shooter, a 1.5GHz processor and an SD card slot, it’s technically superior, but it lacks the pantomime and sex appeal of the Nexus. Ice Cream Sandwich layered with HTC Sense is headed to the Rezound in early 2012.

5. Motorola Droid RAZR

The original RAZR sold more than 130 million units. That makes it Motorola’s most successful brand, and the second best selling phone in the world — of all time. It speaks volumes then, when Motorola decided to christen their latest Droid, the Droid RAZR. It’s impossibly thin at 7.1mm, and thanks to premium materials like diamond-cut aluminium, Gorilla Glass and Kevlar, it outshines the majority of handsets out there in terms of build quality. The Droid RAZR has also received Google’s Ice Cream Sandwich blessing for 2012, but with enhancements such as Smart Actions and MotoCast, don’t expect a stock experience.

4. Nokia N9

It runs an obsolete OS with a weak app eco-system and I wouldn’t recommend it to any of my close friends or family, and yet… I yearn for it. Why? There’s so much drama surrounding the N9. It’s a glimpse of a tantalising alternate future for Nokia had it not partnered with Microsoft. Personally though, I agree with Stephen Elop’s decision to fast-track Nokia’s smartphone strategy with Windows Phone. Having said that, I find the styling of the MeeGo OS on the N9 ultra compelling, and the physical design, bite-the-back-of-your-hand beautiful.

3. Samsung Galaxy S II

The Galaxy S II was Samsung’s best selling phone for 2011, for good reason. It was the yardstick by which every other phone competing in terms of hardware specs was measured and it featured in arguably the best mobile phone advert of the year. It’s scheduled to receive Ice Cream Sandwich albeit with a TouchWiz coating.

2. iPhone 4S

Despite a lacklustre initial reception, the iPhone 4S is Apple’s best selling iPhone ever. Ostensibly, the iPhone 4S is simply to the iPhone 4 what the iPhone 3GS was to the iPhone 3G, and yet there is something intangibly intriguing about it, emotive perhaps, as the phone’s release coincided with the passing of Apple’s chief innovator and visionary, Steve Jobs.

1. Samsung Galaxy Nexus

It’s quite simply the best Android phone ever devised. It’s the first Android phone to run the latest, unadulterated, stock version of the world’s most popular mobile operating system, Ice Cream Sandwich, and brings with it a renewed focus on aesthetics, previously lacking in older versions of Android. Coupled with the sleek physical design of the Galaxy Nexus, it’s everything Android ever aspired to be.