Samsung’s five awards included Best Feature Phone and Best Manufacturer, alongside the Galaxy S3’s triple gong of Best Multimedia Phone, Best Smartphone, and the Editor’s choice award.
Other big winners on the night were O2, which won Best Mobile Network by more than 800 votes – defeating rival Vodafone. Virgin Mobile won Best Mobile Virtual Network Operator, and T-Mobile won best customer support.
Amongst retailers, Carphone Warehouse won Best High Street Retailer, buymobilephones.net won Best Online Retailer and Mobilefun.co.uk won Best Accessory Retailer. A booming category in the recession, Mazuma Mobile picked up Best Recycling Service. Protectyourbubble.com also won Best Insurance Provider.
Amongst the smartphones, Samsung was the big winner on the night, getting five gongs, including the much coveted Best Smartphone award for the Samsung Galaxy S3 – tipping its big rival Apple in several key categories.
The annual What Mobile awards are held yearly and voted on by our readers – there is no editorial input other than the Editor’s Choice award. This year 18,858 readers voted to determine the best of all things mobile in 2012.
The battle between Apple and Samsung raged on, much as it has in the marketplace. The Galaxy S3 beat out the iPhone 4s in the Best Multimedia Phone category 7,108 votes to 4,861. Apple did however dominate in the Best Tablet category, its iPad 3 beating out the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 8,848 to 3,394.
Apple also won best camera phone for the iPhone 4s with 5,977 votes, trailed by the excellent 12MP Sony Xperia S, the 41MP Nokia Pureview 808 and the HTC One X, all of which were around 3000 votes in the rear.
However, our readers have determined that the Galaxy S3 is clearly the best smartphone on the market, beating out the iPhone 4s 8,015 to 5312. We reflected this view also, awarding the deservedly much acclaimed Samsung Galaxy S3 our Editor’s Choice for 2012.
The Readers Choice award went to the Apple iPad 3 (also known as The New iPad – not to be confused with the just released iPad 4, which was not on the ballots).
Best Feature phone went to the Samsung Tocco Lite 2, a multi-faceted device that blurs the lines between a smartphone and a feature phone. The Tocco Lite 2 picked up 5,572 votes, followed by the Nokia Asha 300 with 3,162 votes.
In the other categories the JCB Toughphone Pro Smart won Best Specialist Phone, the HTC One V won Best Value Phone.
