Phone Awards 2011: winners announced

TechRadar Phone awards - do you agree?
TechRadar Phone awards - do you agree?

The TechRadar Phone Awards 2011 have come to an end and now we can finally announce the winners.

This year the awards comprised both readers' votes and categories judged by some of the biggest names in the technology world.

To say that we were pleased with our reader response to the awards would be an understatement. Garnering over 130,000 votes, the awards have been a runaway success, so we can only say thank you to you all for being such an opinionated bunch!

The Phone Awards have been TechRadar's most popular awards so far and it just goes to prove that the mobile phone market is positively burgeoning, full of technological innovations, warring factions and fanboys who live to see what the next OS update will bring.

So, without further ado here is the list of the biggest and best phone tech of the last year… feel free to argue it out in the comments.

Phone of the year

Nominations

  • HTC Desire
  • Apple iPhone 4
  • Orange San Francisco
  • Samsung Galaxy S2
  • Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc

Winner

Samsung Galaxy S2

Samsung galaxy s2

What the judges said: "The Samsung Galaxy S2 might have only been out for a short while, but consumers have been buying it in droves thanks to the combination of stunning design, lightning operation and a pin-sharp screen, putting it head and shoulders ahead of the competition."

Runner-up: Apple iPhone 4

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Best phone for business

Nominations

  • BlackBerry Bold 9780
  • BlackBerry Torch
  • HTC HD 7
  • Nokia E72
  • Apple iPhone 4

Winner

Apple iPhone 4

iPhone 4

What the judges said: "The consumerisation of business devices continues apace - the BlackBerry is the business device of yesteryear."

Runner-up: BlackBerry Bold 9780

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Best phone innovation

Nominations

  • NFC
  • Tegra 2 chip
  • Xbox Live
  • Android 2.3
  • Swype

Winner

NFC

Nexus s

What the judges said: "In terms of the furthest reaching implications, NFC is far and away the most exciting innovation to bring to mobiles. Even if mobile wallets take a while to take-off, other uses such as ticketing, content sharing are disruptive and cool.

Runner-up: Tegra 2

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Best phone accessory

Nominations

  • Mophie Juice Pack Air 4
  • AmpliTube iRig
  • Vodafone Sure Signal
  • Pure i-20
  • Jawbone Jambox

Winner

Jawbone Jambox

Jawbone jambox

What the judges said: "The Jambox is far more compact than expected, small yet bassy in its reach. Whilst the price is somewhat prohibitive, the Bluetooth connectivity and compact nature makes for a great accessory with a myriad of uses, from watching a movie on an iPad 2 to bringing the party to the beach."

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Best phone OS

Nominations

  • Windows Phone
  • Symbian
  • iOS
  • Android
  • Bada

Winner

Android

Android

What the judges said: "Android beats iOS owing to the pace of innovation on the platform. This is evident in how iOS 5 is 'borrowing' lots of features from it.

"It has turned around the fortunes of Motorola, Sony Ericsson and made HTC a household name."

Now check out the winners of the readers votes...

Marc Chacksfield

Marc Chacksfield is the Editor In Chief, Shortlist.com at DC Thomson. He started out life as a movie writer for numerous (now defunct) magazines and soon found himself online - editing a gaggle of gadget sites, including TechRadar, Digital Camera World and Tom's Guide UK. At Shortlist you'll find him mostly writing about movies and tech, so no change there then.

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