'INQ1' named best handset

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — And the winner of the GSMA’s best handset of the year award ... surprisingly was not a smartphone.

A panel of judges for the 2009 Mobile Innovation Global Awards chose the INQ1, a pretty normal slider 3G phone, citing the way it integrates social networking applications like Facebook, Live Messenger and Skype.

The INQ1 (pronounced ink-one) was launched last November in Britain through the telecoms operator 3.

The runners-up were none other than the Nokia’s hot E71 and T-Mobile’s G1, the first phone with Google’s Android to hit the market.

“The importance of this announcement is we wanted to give a message to the market that it is not about technology anymore. It’s about services. It is about user experience,” said Francisco Jeronimo, one of the judges.

Jeronimo said what is special about the INQ1 is that all the applications are integrated around the contacts, so when a user browses the contacts they get the different items without having to open other applications.

“I can see if someone is online on Skype or Messenger,” Jeronimo said.