Without a doubt, 2009 has been the year in which the smartphone finally came of age. It has become an almost indispensable accessory for those who wish to keep up with their work while they are on the move. But with so many different models to choose from, how can you know which one is right for you? Here, we compare three of the leading examples, the iPhone 3G S, the Nokia N97, and Palm Pre to help you decide.

The iPhone 3GS comes with an auto-focusing, 3 megapixel camera capable of shooting high quality video at speeds of up to 30 frames per second. It has a hefty 32GB of flash memory and a voice control system which allows you to access many of the common functions of the device simply by talking into it. However, the most useful feature for people who spend a lot of time on the move is the integral digital compass, which tells the phone which direction you are facing. In combination with the GPS chip inside the phone, this allows you to use the phone as a sat-nav system with turn-by-turn navigation, with software available from leading sat-nav brands such as TomTom and Garmin. There is no keyboard, and it relies instead on an on-screen virtual keyboard for data entry, which is very slick but is not ideal for writing longer documents and messages.

The Palm Pre is a bit cheaper than the iPhone, but has some advantages over its more expensive rival. For a start it is smaller and easier to handle, and has a slide-away QWERTY keyboard for writing emails and documents. The 3.1 inch screen is very bright and clear, and the touchscreen accuracy is on a par with the iPhone, which is to say that it is very good indeed. However, the real trump card of the Palm Pre is its highly developed operating system, which cleverly integrates data from a variety of sources automatically. For example, the calendar automatically includes entries from your online Google calendar, and updates that with entries from your Palm calendar, meaning that you don’t lose data or double book yourself when you switch platforms.