These are the phones I was most impressed by at MWC this year. In order of preference, best first.

Palm Pre

Best new device I’ve seen, a whole new world of ease of use, great UI and productivity. For a fuller run down see my other blog at mwc-barcelona-palm-pre-best-in-show.

The left pic is the Pre sittingon it’s magnetic induction charger playing a movie. The right pic below is of the task bar you can drag up from below the screen.

HTC Magic (G2)

HTC’s second Android device with a very responsive capacitive touch screen this is a step up from the G1. Virtual keyboard which worked well with the capacitive touch screen. Only available on Vodafone in the UK.  As you can see from the pics it’s very slim and good pocket size. To compare and contrast the G1 is bottom right.

Nokia N97

I really wanted to like this phone more for two reasons, the Nokia hospitality at MWC was the best and I really like my N82 but it’s not as good as it could be. Interface is slow (may be better for launch), not multitap, touch screen not very responsive, in fact aside from the big screen, nice angled flip out keyboard and widgets I can’t see any improvement on current NSeries phones. Available from June 2009.

Garmin Nuvifone G60

This nearly made 3rd but bumped to 4th as it’s not as functionally rich as the N97. What it does do of course is full on navigation. It has a nice responsive capacitive touchscreen like the HTC and Palm with a fast and slick UI. I was surprised at the user frieldly, well laid out UI but I guess Garmin are not encumbered with any phone history, just good experience of making decent navigation UI’s. It has a webkit browser with a PC user agent, hence the PC site displayed below, this will be changed for launch. Wi Fi. No ability to write apps for it, it’s a closed platform but does have some nice premade apps, for example “Ciao” a type of find things and friends near me app. In fact I couldn’t find anything it lacked when comparing to my N82 and it’s slim and a good size.