The Best Android Phones

It's hard to believe that it's been little more than three years since Google's open-source Android mobile operating system hit the scene. When the first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1, was released, the mobile landscape looked very different. Most people carried simple handsets that focused on making calls. If you were lucky, you could listen to music or play games on your mobile phone. Back then, you didn't have to have a smartphone that ran thousands of apps to let you, in the palm of your hand, do many of the things your computer could do. Apps weren't even a thing yet. Apple had only released the iPhone 3G and launched its groundbreaking App Store a couple of months earlier.
It was the introduction of Android that helped propel the app-based smartphone to what it is today. The thing Android offered, which Apple's iPhone couldn't, was choice. Since it was an open-source platform, several hardware manufacturers could use the OS on their handsets, and a variety of wireless carriers could offer those phones—and they did.
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Today, you can find hordes of Android phones on each of the major carriers. At the time of this writing, there were more than 20 Android handsets available on Verizon Wireless alone. According to NPD, Android owned 47 percent of the U.S. smartphone market in the last quarter of 2011.
That's a lot of very similar phones to choose from. To come up with our list, we've chosen two to three winners for each of the four major carriers from our highest-rated phones. And for the contract-phobic, we've thrown in the best unlocked handset. If you've settled on Android as your mobile platform, these phones are your best bets—for now, that is. At this rate of growth, we can assure you that there's another great 'Droid right around the corner.