And the nominees for the 14th Global Mobile Awards are…

The countdown timer till the next Mobile World Congress (MWC) is ticking. It starts in less than a month and today the GSMA announced the finalists for the 14th Global Mobile Awards.

As usual, we"ll focus on the third category - Best Mobile Handset or Device. This year"s list of final nominees includes two subcategories as we see it - socializing teen-oriented handsets and business devices.

Actually, we are quite surprised that there is no handset by Samsung or HTC among the finalists. Samsung i900 Omnia, Samsung i8510 INNOV8, HTC Touch Diamond and HTC Touch HD are all among the hottest gadgets this year and are all quite fit for the attention of the spotlights.

The fact that there are no 8 megapixel cameraphones is also quite puzzling.

Nevertheless, let"s go through the devices that have been picked as final nominees. First off, it"s the 3"s INQ1. It ain"t too powerful or too smart but does things that even the smartest can"t.

It puts some of the most popular socializing services (Skype, Facebook, Windows Live Messenger, last.fm) just a click away from you and keeps you in touch with the whole gang even if they are miles away.

INQ1

The next handset - LG KS360 - promises a lot of fun with the popular online socializing services such as MySpace and Facebook, but it also has a full QWERTY keyboard which makes texting a breeze. You can check our LG KS360 review, which has been just published.

LG KS360

The other three devices are almost equally well known, almost equally powerful and almost equally desired. Those are Nokia E71, T-Mobile G1 and RIM"s BlackBerry Storm 9500.

Nokia E71, T-Mobile G1 and BlackBerry Storm 9500

The winners will be announced during the MWC 2009 on 17th February in Barcelona. As usual, we"ll be there to cover the event.

Until then you can check out the last year"s nominees and the review of the winner - the Sony Ericsson W910.