Choosing a new phone or tablet these days is as much about the apps available for it as the hardware itself. As well as the four main app stores below, there are independents such as Getjar.com, which offer a wide selection of free apps for many smartphones. The elephant in the room is Amazon, which has its family of Kindle devices. The new Kindle Fire, coming soon to Britain, will offer a selection of Android apps, books, music and video from Amazon.
APPLE APP STORE
apple.com/uk
The App Store, which stocks apps for iPhones and iPads, is now said to contain more than 500,000 apps, about a quarter of which are optimised for iPad. Stringent vetting procedures keep technical quality high, yet can restrict the scope of what individual apps can do. Despite significant inroads by rivals, Apple remains the mainstream choice for good reasons.
ANDROID MARKET
market.android.com
Google's Android Market has become the primary source for Android apps, and though it is more orderly than it used to be, it is still open to any maker. Unlike the App Store, its apps do not have to gain approval before being admitted. It houses about 320,000 apps, but a much smaller proportion are optimised for Android tablets.
BLACKBERRY APP WORLD
appworld.blackberry.com
BlackBerry says it has 50,000 apps in its store, but the company has struggled to spark the kind of excitement common with Apple and Android software. BlackBerry apps often cost more than rivals and, with some honourable exceptions, they are rarely as slick. Relatively few of these apps work on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, but this will change in the spring, when a software update will enable the device to run some Android apps.
WINDOWS PHONE MARKETPLACE
windowsphone.com/marketplace
Microsoft's relatively new Windows Phone software has been well received, and its official Marketplace offers about 55,000 apps, many of them good. The approval process is said to be more flexible than Apple's.
Apple iPad From ?399;
apple.com/uk
The king of the tablets and the standard against which all others are judged, with the iPad 3 expected to raise the bar in the spring.
Nokia Lumia 800
Price varies with contract; nokia.com
One of the first handsets to sport the swish new Windows Phone software, which blends practicality with cool design.
Lenovo IdeaPad Tablet A1
?170; lenovo.com
This budget tablet delivers on Android's promise to provide a low-cost alternative to dent Apple's dominance, and it can even run Flash videos.
Samsung Galaxy Nexus
Price varies with contract; samsung.com/uk
The huge display makes the Nexus too chunky for some; others gladly trade portability for extra screen space.