For the first time ever, every major carrier in the US actually has smartphones worth buying, meaning you don’t have to break up to get a good phone. Here’s the best phones on each one, along with the best deals.
If you hate the gallery format, click here.
All pricing shown is with a new 2-year contract, and some deals may be temporary.
AT&T
iPhone 3GS
The iPhone 3GS is the best overall smartphone you can buy. It’s really that simple. Best user interface, best internet, best apps, best media support—the list goes on. Okay, not the best network, but nothing’s perfect. $199
BlackBerry Bold 9700
I miss the original BlackBerry Bold’s king-sized keyboard, but the Bold 9700 squeezes the best of the BlackBerry for CEOs into an impressively tight form factor—faux leather back included—making it very possibly the best BlackBerry you can buy. $10
Bonus: Nokia e71x
It’s free, and an actually good smartphone—my favorite Nokia phone on the planet. Free
Verizon
Droid
It’s a terminator. A huge, disgustingly high-res screen, Batman-worthy industrial design, and the full power of Android 2.0 make it the best phone on Verizon—and the fact that it’s running on arguably the best network in the US make it the second best smartphone you can buy, period. $150
BlackBerry Tour
Sure, it’s notorious for trackball problems and it’s missing Wi-Fi, but this is the BlackBerry of choice for email warriors if they’re not on AT&T or T-Mobile—and it sure as hell beats anything running Windows Mobile. $50
Bonus: Droid Eris
If you’re desperate to save $100 over the Droid, the Droid Eris will run Android 2.0 soon enough, and is smoother, smaller, and friendlier, if a little blander. $100
Sprint
Palm Pre
The Pre offers one of the best user experiences of any smartphone with Palm’s webOS, and it’s probably the best phone on Sprint, hardware build issues and comparatively dinky App Catalog aside. $80
HTC Hero
The best Android phone not running Android 2.0, HTC’s Sense UI makes the sometimes confusing Android interface more digestible and has a few nifty tricks of its own, like integrated social networking. $100
Bonus: There is none. The Pixi’s close ($25), but the fact that you can get the Pre for nearly as cheap undercuts a lot of the value, as much as we like the design and form factor.
T-Mobile
Motorola Cliq
Motorola’s other Android phone is gussied up with Blur, a custom interface that’s bright and friendly, with widgets for keeping track of everything happening on your social network. It’s our favorite Android phone on T-Mobile. $100
Unlocked iPhone
No, I’m not kidding. A jailbroken and unlocked iPhone, even without 3G powers, is the second best smartphone you can use on T-Mobile.
Bonus: BlackBerry Bold 9700
The BlackBerry Bold 9700 is the first BlackBerry with 3G on T-Mobile, which is reason enough, really, but it’s good the reasons listed above, too. $130
If you’re looking for the fast, fun, and easy way to “enhance the user experience” on your Droid this holiday season, look no further than the Android 2.0.1 update that Verizon just slipped us some info on. We don’t have an exact drop date at this point, but we’re told that Droid owners can expect an over-the-air package in the “coming weeks” — and most notably, changes will include improved camera autofocus and better voice reception. Since these particular fixes are presumably device-specific, it’s interesting that this is being done in lockstep with an official Android trunk release — but all Google’s saying is that the underlying platform contains “several bug fixes and behavior changes, such as application resource selection based on API level and changes to the value of some Bluetooth-related constants.” Good stuff.
