GSMA’s Mobile World Congress (MWC), as a tradition, is about to commence in Barcelona later this month and the along with comes the Association’s mobile awards. In the ‘Best Smartphone’ category, five smartphones have been chosen – the Apple iPhone 4S (no brownie points for this one, it was quite obvious), the Samsung Galaxy S II (bombarded the market with instance success), the HTC Desire S (literally quietly brilliant), the Samsung Galaxy Nexus (the first bite of Ice Cream Sandwich) and the Nokia Lumia 800 (vendor’s game-changing smartphone). While we’ll be talking at length about the nominees in the feature phone and tablet categories in our upcoming posts, jump the break to read more about these best five smartphone nominees.

Apple iPhone 4S: Not only it has been deemed as the best iPhone so far by the users, it is also one of the best smartphones out there in the market. At the time of its launch, the units were selling faster than hot cakes and as a result, the demand outpaced its supply. Not only it rippled some serious waves in the industry, its launch event had also caused a stampede by thousands of overzealous iPhone fans in Beijing. Apple has pushed the iPhone 4S to 91 countries in the world and has also sold over 37 million iPhones in the last quarter. Agreeably, the company didn’t bring in a radical new design as the iPhone 4S looks exactly like its previous version, however, it did bring in an improved camera, faster processor and a virtual personal assistant called Siri. As Jonathan S. Geller from the BGR Classic points out, what the company has truly done is improve upon the ever-so-popular and the most successful smartphone ever – the iPhone 4 (was also the Best Mobile Device last year at MWC) and has made the latest iteration even more futuristic.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus: Though its launch has been delayed in India till March, however, it is one of the hottest sought-after smartphones wherever it is available. The device runs on Android 4.0 aka Ice Cream Sandwich and you can read all the good stuff about this latest version of the software here. According to Pocket Now, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus doesn’t fares well due to its poor battery life, camera and its pentile display. Even the folks at Engadget have a similar view and feel that the device could not live up to the legacy of the ‘Nexus’ branding. Nevertheless, due to its software – Android 4.0, it also happens to be one of the best Android smartphones out there running the most-recent OS.

Nokia Lumia 800: Along with arranging a grand launch, Nokia did everything it could to promote its Lumia brand of Windows Phone devices – the Lumia 710 and the Lumia 800. Painting a Jet Aircraft with an intention to promote the Lumia range was just an example of how much Nokia and Microsoft expected from these smartphones. Well, Nokia’s efforts are just not wasted as the Lumia 800 did manage to be the best Windows Phone smartphone in the market. Undoubtedly, the Windows Phone OS is truly good-looking, however, the lack of apps on this relatively newer platform does steals the thunder of this device. A few units of the Lumia 800 also suffered from the alleged ‘battery bug’ (in countries other than India) which didn’t allow the device to utilize the battery to the optimum. An update was pushed later by Nokia to fix this issue.

Samsung Galaxy S II: This smartphone has indeed seen a longer shelf life as compared to all other competitors mentioned above except from the HTC Desire S which was launched a month ahead of the Galaxy S II. Svelte and super-light, this Android 2.3 handset proved to be a worthy upgrade to the its former version – the Samsung Galaxy S. While many feel that Samsung smartphones rarely feel industrial or high end, this one certainly exceeded the build quality on the original Galaxy S, like mentioned by The Verge.

HTC Desire S: This handset by HTC looks almost like the Incredible S and the Sensation.  Apart from the difference in display size (the Sensation has the largest display, a 4.3-inch one) and the processors, there’s no significant difference in the look of this trio. Made out of a single block of metal (a unibody design), the HTC Desire S was one of the few smartphones to run on Google’s then-latest Android 2.3.3 aka Gingerbread. The Taiwanese vendor did prove its message “quietly brilliant” by making a phone which has no stand-out features but yet manages to shine in the crowd with its sheer simplicity in industrial design and also with its clean yet brilliant Sense UI.

Our Prediction: We think it will be a close fight between the iPhone 4S and the Galaxy S II, both of which have not only proven their popularity in the market but have also propelled their respective makers above the rest. The Galaxy Nexus and Lumia 800 would be the underdogs but we have seen stranger things happen in this industry.