Head to head: iPhone 3GS vs Palm Pre

When it comes to email, both handsets support the usual suspects of Exchange and POP3/IMAP so which one is best comes down to personal preference of how the emails appear on the device itself. And, of course, the speed of delivery. The Pre does offer a one-stop-shop for multiple inboxes, providing access to different accounts through one logical place.

The Pre really wins out on its multi-tasking ability. The O2 website describes it as like "shuffling cards' and it's something business users will most definitely appreciate. Apps continue to run in the background in snapshot form when you go back home, which works for us. Yes, the iPhone can multi-task' to a certain extent, but the Pre takes things one step further, juggling multiple applications and making it look very easy indeed a boon for business users who are more often than not trying to do three things at once at any given time.

If you're a business user overwhelmed by too many contacts, or a consumer trying to keep track of different friend groups, the Pre has something for you in the form of Synergy. This handy tool unites your contacts, calendaring and messaging together in one place, saving you both time and effort.

If you've had a conversation with one person spread out over multiple mediums, for example, Synergy will thread them together in a unified view. Synergy also unites your calendaring information so you know what you're meant to be doing when at a glance rather than having to trawl through multiple online diaries.

Winner: Pre. After revisiting what the Pre had to offer feature-wise, we changed our minds. We couldn't get Google Maps up and running during our tests and there's no digital compass, voice memos or video recording, but out-of-the-box, for its Synergy feature and workhorse approach to multitasking, the Pre wears the crown here.

Maggie Holland

Maggie has been a journalist since 1999, starting her career as an editorial assistant on then-weekly magazine Computing, before working her way up to senior reporter level. In 2006, just weeks before ITPro was launched, Maggie joined Dennis Publishing as a reporter. Having worked her way up to editor of ITPro, she was appointed group editor of CloudPro and ITPro in April 2012. She became the editorial director and took responsibility for ChannelPro, in 2016.

Her areas of particular interest, aside from cloud, include management and C-level issues, the business value of technology, green and environmental issues and careers to name but a few.