The Smart Set

Almost like a futuristic vision from a comic strip of 50 years ago, every business traveller in the world now carries in a spare pocket or a corner of a handbag a global communications device.

Indeed, these extraordinary machines actually do more than even sci-fi writers envisioned.

Not only can we use them to speak to practically anyone on the planet, but we can send them messages, pictures, video and documents, download and watch music and films, navigate, shop, and read books, magazines and newspapers wherever we may be.

But the competition between smartphones is keen. Which is the smartest? Jonathan Margolis looks at the three current top offerings.

BlackBerry Bold 9000

Canadian pioneer BlackBerry invented the idea of the business smartphone when it introduced live, real-time email to mobile phones a decade ago.

One of its latest, and by general consensus its greatest, is the BlackBerry Bold 9000, which retains the squashed-fruit look (it explains the BlackBerry name) but adds enough fun features to make the Bold respected the world over.

The Bold is the complete corporate package and is easy for your IT department to integrate into a secure company network, and maintain remotely. You can work on Microsoft Word and PowerPoint on the move — and listen to downloaded music files while you're doing so.

It will pick up local Wi-Fi networks to make web use even faster and has a passable 2-megapixel camera for taking photos and video clips. The camera has built-in flash and a digital zoom. You can add extra memory with a microSD card

The Bold also has satnav capability, which saves having to carry a separate satnav with you on business trips when you don't want to be laden with gadgetry like a technological pack horse.

Smartphones do such a lot that they suck the life out of batteries at a sometimes alarming rate. Apple in its wisdom (see iPhone 3GS) seals the battery into its product, so when it runs out of juice, you're out of contact. Not so BlackBerry; you can carry as many previously charged batteries as you please. A basic but incredibly practical touch.

Palm Pre

Long before smartphones, when a blackberry was still a fruit, we had pocket-sized PDAs – personal digital assistants. And the biggest name in these was Palm, originators of the mighty Palm Pilot, that road warrior icon of the 1990s.

Palm didn't quite disappear at the turn of the century, but it lost its edge and was largely forgotten. In spite of a steady stream of nice-but-no-cigar smartphones, it's taken until this year for Palm to make its big comeback with this, its eagerly-awaited, if oddly named, Pre, which has been welcomed as the biggest threat yet to the dominance of BlackBerry and iPhone.

The Pre is like a small, highly polished stone that magically slides apart to reveal its inner workings. Its brain is actually a bit bigger than its competitors' and it's possible to keep three or four programmes working simultaneously — more like on a PC than a phone.

The Pre's screen is smaller than the iPhone's, and you may prefer the way it looks with video on-screen. Among the many wonders of the Pre is an easily learned system of finger gestures, which make using the phone as sensuous a pleasure (if you are into this kind of thing) as the iPhone. On the other hand, the keyboard has actual keys, unlike the iPhone's on-screen keys, which some people can't abide. Do beware the Pre's battery life, though — it's not brilliant. Otherwise fine technology all round.

iPhone 3GS

Techie style guru Apple bided its time for years before safari-ing out into the mobile phone jungle. But when it entered with its first — and still outrageously beautiful — iPhone two years ago, it managed to bring technical pizzazz and chic together into a smartphone.

The iPhone's mission was to combine business with pleasure — to help us do all the important stuff we need during the day, and then keep us entertained in the evening or on long journeys. And how Apple succeeded. This 2009 version of the iPhone sold a million units within a week of its release in June.

Apple has ironed out several of the irritations that marred earlier models and the new phone manages to be a pleasure to use even when you're doing boring stuff. Internet access is now as fast as it's currently possible to achieve via phone networks (which, let's be honest, isn't very fast). Battery life is fractionally better, although the battery is still non-removable, which means anyone wanting to work all day with an iPhone will need an external battery; many such devices exist.

There's no point pretending that the iPhone is the ultimate in pure business smartphones. Part of the fun of the iPhone has been the vast array of downloadable applications, from wine tasting guides to language tutors to spirit levels. There are business travellers who will need phones that run more hairy-chested business software and less amusing applications. But if you can get away with an iPhone, it has more chic than any other competitor.

To Infinity and Beyond

Richard Lofthouse sees sense in Seiko's leap into luxury

This month witnesses a milestone in the history of Japan's largest watchmaker Seiko: the launch of its first luxury range sold globally. Called Ananta (the Sanskrit word for infinity), the timepieces range in price from €2,000 to €5,500, sending Seiko into the rarefied atmosphere usually associated with top Swiss brands such as Rolex and Breitling.

The move is not to be confused with Seiko's Kinetic innovation from the mid-1980s, which used the movement of the wearer's wrist to generate an electrical pulse allowing quartz accuracy without batteries.

Nor is it to be confused with the introduction four years ago of Spring Drive, heralded as a revolution in horology based around combining elements of quartz technology with a mechanical movement, which was initially produced in tiny quantities for very high prices — $100,000 in the case of the inherently collectible Credor Spring Drive Sonnerie, sold under the Credor brand in Japan only.

This time Seiko has brought a refined Spring Drive movement to the affluent masses by combining it with luxury designs themed around the shapes and styling of a samurai Katana sword, which, in particular, influences the shape of the lugs, which are striking.

There are three mechanical calibres, an elegant GMT with a power reserve of 72 hours, plus two completely new movements — a chronograph and a double retrograde.

This may be enough to whet the appetite of even the most hardened Swiss-watch snob, still appalled at the way that the Seiko's invention of the quartz watch in 1969 nearly brought the Swiss industry to ruin.

Very few industry observers thought that Seiko would bring the price point of Spring Drive so low so quickly, and no one really expected the king of quartz to so rapidly match (and surpass, depending on your point of view) the Swiss at their own mechanical game.

Seiko's market timing appears to be propitious, seeing as its offerings undercut in price many Swiss rivals while focusing relentlessly on engineering quality and longevity and what could be the new watchword for a recessionary atmosphere: ‘tangible luxury'.