With a new year comes a batch of new phones - here's our pick of the best.

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iPhone 5

All-new design, slimmer, appreciably lighter (20 per cent less heft, to be exact), a taller 4in screen, great camera that's better in low light and a lightning fast speed thanks to an A6 processor. In fact, that's the best thing as far as we’re concerned: surfing the web with the iPhone 5 is startlingly pacey – a joy compared with the 4. Yes the maps app is nowhere near as good as it should be, but knowing Apple they’ll be fixed. And one last bonus: the woeful old earbuds have gone, replaced with "EarPods".

Price with contract,  apple.com/uk

Vertu Signature Zirconium

At Esquire we like to make time to appreciate arts and craft, even in the middle of a guide to high-end smartphones. Vertu’s new Signature Zirconium is the first phone to be hand-assembled by a single craftsman, which goes some way to explaining the price. Made from a high-performance material similar to Titanium “except more durable” it’s so hard you need a diamond to scratch it. Featuring a sapphire crystal hi-res OLED display, a high-fidelity 11mm x 15mm speaker and jeweled bearings, it’s also the only phone to feature ringtones and alerts played by the London Symphony Orchestra as standard.

£13,200, vertu.com

Nokia Lumia 920

Seen the ad where Nokia is mocking Apple monochrome world? It nails what’s so great about the Lumia 920: the simple joy of adding bold colour to your tech. Nokia’s first Windows Phone 8 model has a polycarbonate unibody build (reassuringly strong), a 4.5in display (slick), NFC (pays for stuff) and built-in wireless charging (though you need to buy the recharge “pillow” separately). Topping this rainbow of features is the excellent PureView system for the camera, giving shots and HD video of a quality that by rights really shouldn’t come from a phone.

Price with contract, nokia.com