Take a look into any woman’s purse and you’ll find that we almost all have the same basic essentials: wallet, keys, some makeup, mirror, and a phone, to name a few. With the increasing quality and quantity of choices for hot new phones, it can all be quite overwhelming. There seems to be a new phone coming out every week, but how can you know which one will be best for you? Most of the reviews online just confuse with all their technical jargon and are often slanted towards gadget geeks rather than normal women. Myself, I have been paralyzed in indecision for months trying to pick the best one. I don’t care if it supports this or that format, or what 3G or 2G means. I just want to know if it’s affordable, if it’s pretty, easy to use, and has cool stuff that I need! The perfect phone doesn’t exist, but you can get to at least 90% of the way there by doing some careful shopping. Lucky for you, I’ve done some research on your behalf! Here’s my rundown of the top smart phones for smart women:

iPhone 3GS

Unless you’ve recently emerged from a black hole, you know about the iPhone.  The mother of all smart phones, this phone woke up the public to touch-screens and caused them to ditch their old phones forever. Sorry Razr, we had a good run.

Looks: Easily the most customizable, it’s super easy to find a variety of fantastic face plates to customize your iPhone for every mood.

Size/weight: easily fits into a purse, but perhaps not a clutch.

Price: $299

Battery: 5 hours of talk time

Features: Standard features (music, GPS, bluetooth, wifi, internet browser) and the latest version has video recording capability as well as a video-editing tool.

Apps: 128,000 and counting

Pros: the iPhone is the phone for you if you are keen on using apps.  You know how they say in the commercial that “there’s an app for that”? It most definitely is true.

Cons: No multi-tasking function, no way to expand the built-in memory (although with 32GB, do you really need to?) and no replaceable battery unit means the iPhone is exactly as-is and nothing more.  Rumour has it that too, that the screen is easily scratched.

Blackberry Bold 9700

The Bold is the most popular model of Blackberry and with its latest incarnation, RIM hopes to wrestle for the spot of top dog against its “fruity” competitor.

Looks: Still pretty much the same, with its business-like aesthetic and iconic leather-like backing.

Size/weight: slightly smaller than the iPhone and the lightest of the bunch, the Bold wins in this category

Price: $199

Battery: 6 hours

Features: standard features plus Blackberry Messenger, a Blackberry specific messaging service that allows all BB users to message each other.

Apps: 2000+ via Blackberry app store

Pros: Perfect for professionals or anyone always on the go. Also good for people who like to text a lot, as it has a great QWERTY keyboard. The new Bold has also replaced its trademark track ball for a sleek optical scanner that is fast and easy to use.

Cons: A small app store is a major disadvantage and really decreases this phone’s “cool” factor. The Bold is more functional than pretty and its interface is a bit clunky. The Internet browser is also slow and ugly. Finally, the screen size on the Bold is the smallest of the bunch, which is also a big minus. This phone is like buying a practical no-name briefcase when all you want is a sleek Valentino tote!

These next two devices are new to the smart phone scene, but are already making a splash! If you’re a trendsetter, you might want to pick up one of these just to be ahead of the curve.

Motorola Droid

Looks: Ugly, with sharp rectangular angles, but has the biggest screen of them all.

Price: $199

Battery: 6.4 hours

Size/weight: The clunkiness is exacerbated by its heavy 6oz weight. Considering it’s the same size as the others basically, its heavy weight is a disadvantage since with everything else you’re hauling, who needs a heavy phone?

Features: Besides the standards, the Droid has multi-tasking functionality that allows users to maintain multiple screens of stuff, and since it’s an Android phone it has built-in Google services. Having Google services built-in is a huge plus because it means you can have Google Maps GPS service for free, whereas the other devices charge for GPS service usually. Also the Droid features 3 keyboards: one physical and two virtual!

Apps: 16,000+ via Google Android app store

Pros: Very fast and free services! A great alternative to the previous two.

Cons: QWERTY keyboard has very flat keys making it a bit hard to type on.

LG Eve

Looks: Slick curved design that fits easily in your hand. Features landscape slide-out keyboard. You can also change the phone’s skin, but otherwise there isn’t anything distinguishable about this phone.

Price: $399.99 via Rogers

Size/weight: Average weight and this phone easily fits into your hand. Its narrow shape will let it fit into your teeny clutches.

Features: The Eve has some very intriguing features as it was designed to optimize the social networking experience. Features include integration with Facebook, Twitter, and Bebo, letting users easily access and update their various profiles. As well, your phonebook is synced with other network data and has a really cool photo-tagging feature; as you tag your contacts photos in your phone, Eve will learn who is who and auto-tag future photos! The Eve also has a QWERTY keyboard and photo/video editing software.

Apps: 16,000+ via Google Android app store

Pros: Great integration for social networks, rotational multi-tasking screens, and good sensitivity on touch screen.

Cons: Menus aren’t the most intuitive and it can be tricky trying to figure out how various functions work. The battery life is terrible, meaning you will likely have to charge it almost daily.

I hope you found this guide to be informative and helpful!  Please feel free to share your own experiences with any of these phones!

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Jordana Mah

Software developer by day, writer by night, Jordana works as a freelance writer for various online publications and blogs. You can usually find her glued to a keyboard either shopping online, blogging, or tweeting, but she occasionally ventures out for movies, food, shopping sales, and bubble tea.

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