Five best smartphones for business 2009

Jason Hiner: Smartphones are becoming a standard tool for many of today's knowledge workers and IT professionals. Meanwhile the number of smartphone choices on the market is exploding, so we'd like to help IT leaders sort out the top smartphones for workers who are looking for serious productivity.

I'm Jason Hiner, and today on episode number 78 of CIO Sanity Savers, we'll count down 2009's five best smartphones for businesses. Stay tuned.

No. 5: The Nokia E71

While the software in Nokia smartphones is not quite as user-friendly as the other devices at the top of this list, Nokia is a favorite for many companies because of its strong integration with unified messaging and fixed mobile convergence. The E71 specifically is really slim  and portable and has a nice little hardware keyboard. The one caveat to watch out for is that its Microsoft Exchange client does NOT sync up with inbox subfolders.

No. 4: The HTC Touch Pro2

Windows Mobile can be a bit slow and clunky, but it still boasts a wide array of business applications, especially in niche verticals such as retail and manufacturing. The Touch Pro2 is a little thick but it boasts a large screen (480x800) and a slide out landscape keyboard that makes it a very good device for data entry. It also does global roaming.

No. 3: The Palm Pre

The Palm Pre offers the best multi-tasking that you'll find on a smartphone. The problem is that there aren't a whole lot of apps available to take advantage of that yet. The Pre also features a slide-out keyboard but the keys are pretty small and not all that comfortable. However, the Pre's touchscreen webOS is great and makes the Pre one of the most user-friendly mobile devices that you'll find.

No. 2: The iPhone 3GS

The only smartphone that's more user-friendly than the Palm Pre is the iPhone, the one device on this list that truly doesn't even need a user manual. The iPhone also sports a very nice screen (320x480), a very thin form factor, and a very large and rapidly-growing ecosystem of applications. The biggest drawback is that it doesn't have a hardware keyboard and not all users will be comfortable using its on-screen keyboard for lots of data entry.

No. 1: The BlackBerry Tour

For security and centralized manageability, you still can't beat BlackBerry, mostly because of its backend BES platform. That's why IT departments, financial institutions, and governments all tend to favor BlackBerry. The BlackBerry Tour, with Verizon 3G service, global roaming, a top-notch hardware qwerty keyboard, and a hi-res multimedia screen, is currently the best BlackBerry that money can buy. The one caveat is that it's not as good for Web browsing as the iPhone or the Palm Pre.

To go deeper on this topic and each of the devices, check out the links in the show notes.

I'm Jason Hiner, and this has been episode 78 of CIO Sanity Savers. For more, you can find my blog at hiner.techrepublic.com, and you find me on Twitter at twitter.com/jasonhiner. Thanks for watching. See you next week.