Christmas Gadget Countdown 2009 - 1. Mobile phone apps

Excecutive perhipherals editor Nigel Harris casts his vote for the gadget phenomenon of 2009.

The iPhone has been gadget of the year for the last couple of years, but what has really taken off in the last 12 months has been phone apps, so I’m giving them my vote for the 2009 Gadget of the Year. The iTunes store clearly leads the way in both quantity and quality, thanks to the success and ease of use of the iPhone. Top apps at the moment include the Guardian news app, TomTom satnav software for iPhone, games such as Call of Duty and FIFA 10 and free apps such as the Facebook app (and, believe it or not, the mobile version of the 2010 IKEA catalogue, I kid you not!).

On other phone operating systems there are growing app libraries. For Windows Mobile users there is the main Microsoft Windows Marketplace, which comes pre-installed on Windows Mobile 6.5 phones and can be downloaded on version 6.0 and 6.1 phones. The (free) FaceBook app is particularly popular. Third party sites such as www.handango.com and www.pocketgear.com are also a good source of commercial Windows Mobile apps, although they are not always that good at indentifying which version of the operating system they were written for – as with most Microsoft applications, they don’t all work perfectly on every version!

Over at the Android market you can get many of the same apps for phones running Google’s Android OS while www.symbiangear.com has apps for Symbian OS phones.