Top 5 Most Popular Cell Phones this holiday season

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

With Christmas shopping now in full swing, and the holiday season fast approaching, here is a helpful guide to the 5 most popular mobile phones to place under the tree of your gadget-loving loved ones. If a cell phone was on your Christmas shopping list, you will want to pay close attention to this list, as these are the phones that everybody wants, and the same phones which are probably going to be the hardest to find the closer to Christmas you wait.

5. Blackberry Pearl 8100

Everybody loves Blackberrys, often referred to as 'Crackberrys' due to their highly addictive nature, and the newest addition to the Blackberry lineup is no exception. A quad-band smartphone, the Pearl 8100 comes with many great all purpose features such as a large 240x260 pixel 65,000 color display, EDGE and Bluetooth connectivity (but unfortunately no WiFi), SMS, MMS, Email, and Instant Messaging. A 1.3 megapixel camera, built-in hands free, document viewer (Word, Excel, and Powerpoint) and a Lithium Ion battery capable of 3.5 hours of talk time, and up to 360 hours on standby round out the list, making this a very good choice for the young business professional on the go. Priced at $450 USD.

4. Nokia N73

While this phone has been on the market for a while now, it is still a favorite amongst mobile phone affectionados, and a very sound gift choice that you can impress the most discriminating of gadget connoisseurs. Noteworthy features of the Nokia N73 include an impressive 3 megapixel camera that is amongst one of the best quality cameras in a phone I have tried, paired with a large bright QVGA screen with 240x320 pixel resolution that is easily visable even under bright sunlight. The impressive camera optics come courtesy of Carl Zeiss. There is also a secondary VGA camera for video calling. This is a 3G phone with data transfer rates of up to 384 kbps, and has an MP3/AAC/MP4 player built in to handle playback of the most popular music and video formats. This is perhaps the most feature-packed phone on the market right now, and also boasts a very decent 6 hour talk time, and up to 350 hours on standby. Expect your wallet to become $500 lighter if you purchase it with a service plan, and up to $700 lighter if you buy it unlocked to use on any network.



3. Sony Ericsson K750

While being the lowest priced phone to make our list, do not let the price fool you - this phone packs alot of punch into a solid entry level phone popular with younger teenagers and the college crowd. Sony has been a name associated with quality electronics for many years, and their partnership with Swedish phone giant Ericsson has produced some of the best mobile phones this decade in quality, features and in value. This tri-band phone boasts a 2MP camera and a 256K color display, MP3 audio and MP4 video playback, and a very impressive 9 hours of talk time on a single charge. This phone will relieve you of only about $250.



2. LG KE800 Chocolate II Platinum

Earlier this year, LG already impressed us with the release of the 'Chocolate' designer series of cell phones, named after their candy bar-sized format, and for the fact that "Everybody loves chocolate!" Well LG has done it once again with the KE800 Chocolate II Platinum. The phone has been given a major facelift, making it alot slimmer, but slightly wider than previous models, and easily just as sexy! This is the perfect phone for that style-conscious person on your Christmas shopping list. A tri-band GSM phone, it gets 6 hours of talk time, and up to 270 hours in standby mode. It comes 256MB of memory, but is easily upgradable to 8GB. It packs all the features that are pretty much expected of any phone nowdays - playing back both MP3 and AAC audio, as well as MP4 video. Other features worth mentioning include Bluetooth, SMS, MMS, Email client, and Instant Messaging. This phone was only annouced in October, but will be in stores before Christmas at an expected retail price of about $500-600 with a service plan.

Which now brings us to the most sought-after phone since its release, and will certainly hold that honor throughout the holiday season as well:

1. iMate JAMin

This is perhaps the most sensible handheld device ever marketed. The iMate JAMin brings together the best of several handheld devices. Part PDA, Part smartphone, with a decent dose of portable PC and media device thrown in for good measure. The JAMin is the fourth serious handheld gadget to come out of the iMate camp, and each one keeps getting better! This multi-purpose handheld device is quad-band plus EDGE, and features touchscreen TFT technology, a very generous 240x320 pixel QVGA display, with handwriting recognition. Now how cool is that?

Definately not a device for the technologically-challenged, this amazing gadget comes with both Bluetooth and 802.11b/g WiFi connectivity, miniUSB sync'ing and charging, a 2 megapixel camera, playback of MP3/AAC/MP4 formats, and the very popular Pocket PC 5.0 operating system. All this technology in the palm of your hand does not come cheaply though -- expect to drop at least $650 on this bad boy -- but you can be guaranteed to be the recipient's favorite person for at least the next year anyways!

Electronics, handheld gadgets, and cellphones specifically, are very big sellers every Christmas holiday season, so if you have not yet begun to track them down, you will want to do so very soon - to avoid the disappointment of sold out store stocks.