The Fairest Fight : Samsung i8910 HD vs Google Nexus One vs Nokia N97

In the battle of top end, large-screened smartphones, the Symbian-powered flagships have a new competitor: the Google Nexus One, selling across the world and offering the unadulterated Google Android experience. And this being the start of 2010, it's also a good moment to pitch the two open source operating systems against each other. But how mature is Android (2.1)? And how do the device and its software stand up to two of the flagships from the Symbian world, the Nokia N97 and the Samsung i8910 HD?
From the Symbian world, the latter is the standout obvious device to compare the new Nexus One to, having virtually identical specs and form factor. However, Samsung's continuing lack of support for their Symbian flagship has rendered the i8910 HD something of a niche device and almost unknown, seemingly, outside of Italy - or Orange in the UK, in crippled form - and geek circles. Which is why I decided to add the Nokia N97 into the mix as well. The screen's almost as large as that in the other two phones, the price tag is similar, plus you do get a workable physical qwerty keyboard, albeit (understandably) at the expense of extra thickness.
It's at this point that the hack-loving i8910 HD freaks (and I use the term 'lovingly') will be crying foul, but the fact remains that a modern smartphone is so much more than collection of silicon chips and bits of plastic. The Nexus One and the N97 both leap ahead of the Samsung by virtue of far better support from their manufacturer in terms of updates and software.
The almost identical scores between Nexus One and N97 reflect that they each have their strengths, with one being strong in areas that the other is weak. Technically, the Nexus One comes out the winner, but it would only take a single preference (e.g. "I must have a camera protecting shutter") to flip the scores right around. In truth, both are flawed 'superphones' and the only irony is that the Samsung i8910 HD would easily come out on top of the group test if it had Nokia's software, updates and services plus Google's cloud integration.
Which means, yet again, that we're back to 'build your perfect phone' territory - the staple of conversation down the All About Symbian virtual pub....
One useful way to look at the three smartphones here is that they're aimed at different markets:

• Samsung i8910 HD - pitched by networks as a high end camera and media phone, this has ended up being suitable for hard core geeks willing to put lots of effort into tweaking and customising.
• Nokia N97 - pitched as the Nseries flagship, the N97 turns out to be a pretty good all-rounder, but newcomers to smartphones shouldn't apply - quite a bit of effort and setup is still needed if you're going to have a trouble free experience.
• Google Nexus one - provided the new user has a Google account and uses it, setup is trivial and there's almost nothing to go wrong.