iPhone 3G S tops New Smart Phone Ratings, edging out Palm Pre

The iPhone 3G S tops our new smart-phone Ratings (available to subscribers), with strong performance in everything but voice quality, an area in which few phones score well. It's not a runaway winner, though. A number of other phones ranked close to the iPhone, including the Palm Pre, which turned in a fine performance, as we expected from our head-to-head review of these two highly publicized rivals.

The phones vary significantly in how they achieve their high scores. The iPhone 3G S edged out high-scoring competitors such as the Palm Pre and BlackBerry Storm thanks to a superior display, reinforced by top-notch multimedia, navigation, Web browsing, and battery life. However, the Pre, the Storm, and other BlackBerry models bested the iPhone in messaging, and the Pre, with its new deck-of-cards handling of multiple applications, is a superior multitasker.