Top 10 best tech presents for Christmas

2. Motorola Droid
Shaun Nichols: It seems like for the past year we have seen an endless parade of devices which hope to stack up with the iPhone, only to fall short in the eyes of consumers.

The Motorola Droid, however, may be the strongest challenger to the iPhone's crown yet. The Android-powered device sports a laundry list of selling points, including a physical keyboard, removable battery and, in the US, a larger 3G network than the competition (as carrier Verizon loves to point out.)

Droid could also have an advantage in the application space, as Google's Android store is aiming to be far more inclusive and liberal about content than Apple is with its App Store.

Still, it's hard to say that any smartphone can go toe-to-toe with the iPhone in the consumer market right now. Perhaps Droid can finally break through and woo consumers from Apple, but I'm not going to believe it until I see it.

Iain Thomson: Well, Droid has a lot of buzz in the market right now, and a visit to the Verizon shop in San Francisco saw many consumers eager to buy, but is it enough one wonders?

At first look Apple looks to have the whip hand, and that's certainly the case at the moment. But Droid has something Apple doesn't: the affection of developers. Apple developers are getting increasingly fractious about the way they are treated, with applications held up or even rejected for no other reason than Apple says so.

Android, on the other hand, is a much more open system, and because of that it's gaining an increasing amount of support among the development community. Having tried out an Android phone earlier this year I can tell you that you'll find a lot of good apps out there.

The Droid is a good first attempt at the iPhone crown, but the two-model split is a bad idea and Motorola needs to decide which market it is aiming at. That said, it's a very impressive effort.

1. iPhone
Iain Thomson: Once we've compiled the Top 10 lists we then get to sort out who writes what. This is usually a simple coin toss for odds versus evens and, when I got the odd-numbered column, Shaun had a distinctly sly grin on his face.

I've boycotted the iPhone from the start, since a closed system controlled by Apple that locks you into a two-year contact is not how I roll. Plus, iPhone users were so bloody smug about the things in the early days that it turned me right off. This must make me the only technology journalist in the Bay Area who doesn't use one.

But, like it or not, the iPhone is still the gadget of choice for many techies. Its design was pretty revolutionary on release and improvements have been made since. The range of applications available dwarfs the competition, just as iTunes dominates the download market. And it's very pretty.

You have to admire the way Apple has taken a basic set of components and stretched them to the absolute limit. Nokia has nothing to match it, and the other manufacturers' touch-screen phones look like knock-off Apple products.

The next year is going to be very interesting for the iPhone's future. Apple had never been a mass-market vendor before the iPod, and it's going to be interesting to see how the product develops. If Apple chooses the mass-market approach, we may not see it on the top spot next year. If it stays exclusive I'd expect it to remain very high indeed.

Shaun Nichols: For two years running the iPhone has topped our list of hot geek gifts, and with good reason.

Apple's smartphone is becoming something of a cultural icon and the recent updates to the handset and its App Store have caused the developer community around the iPhone to explode. Everything from games to productivity applications to commercial services is available, giving the iPhone an appeal with a huge range of users.

The IT world is notorious for its high turnover and short life spans of devices. It is rather amazing then that the iPhone has been able to absolutely dominate the headlines ever since it was first introduced at the Macworld Expo in 2007.

This year the headlines surrounding the iPhone's carriers have managed to make it an even more intriguing gift idea. Many of the exclusive contracts Apple signed with carriers when the device was first hitting the market are set to expire, and users may soon find themselves with a much wider selection of carriers which support the iPhone.