PDA Essentials issue 68 hits the streets today (in the UK, at least), with a special section on their prestigious annual awards (in conjunction with the likes of Clove and Expansys). Of interest here is that the Nokia N95 got voted the 'Best Smartphone', in a hotly contested category (beating the Sony Ericsson P1i, among others). The Nokia E90 lost out to the HTC TyTN II for 'Best PDA' and, curiously, there wasn't a category for best 'communicator' or 'business/email' device. For more detail, go buy your own copy!
Read on in the full article.
You usually find with these magazines that they will spread the awards around different manufacturers, giving a false results. If you look at Stuff or T3 'Best of table' at the back of their magazines one to ten best of in any catagory (phone, PDA, Laptop etc) are made up of different manufacturer so as not to upset one manufacturer and so makes everyone (suppliers and fans) happy
The N95 is the most capable phone device available and while there will never to universal agreement on whether the TyTn II is better than the E90 or not, it's right that those two devices dominate that category.
I've always found PDA Essentials to be fairly even-handed so I'm not sure allegations of advertising-driven bias are at all fair.
We will each have a personal view but while I think the N95 is way ahead of anything similar (inc. iPhone) I find the TyTn II to be better than the E90 in the sense that it's easier to live with (though both devices need some third party apps installed straight away to get the most out of them).