Consumer Reports recently compared and rated the top smartphones in the country. To no one's surprise, the iPhone 3GS was the star of the show. It beat out every other smartphone on the market in terms of overall score. What's remarkable isn't that the 3GS won, it's how narrow a margin it won by.

The test rated phones on a scale of 0 to 100. The 3GS scored a 73, the 3G and Omnia a 70, the BlackBerry 9530/G1/Bold and Samsung Epix all tied at 69, and the Pre/Curve and Insight came in at 68. The fact that none of the smartphones scored better than a 73 says that either Consumer Report's standards are too high, or that actual consumer standards are too low.

Consumer Reports changed things up a bit for this test. They tweaked their rating system to put more emphasis on things like app handling, mobile browsing, and multimedia than on call time or quality. That's just further proof that consumers are starting to value different qualities in a mobile phone than ever before.

The most surprising thing about this study to me was how poorly the Pre performed. While all of the top smartphones came in very close together, the Pre was rated below both the 3G and the T-Mobile G1, two much older phones. When the next generation of Android phones hits in force, I expect this list to change significantly. If the G1 did this well despite its outdated hardware, a brand-new smartphone loaded with an improved version of Android should clean up.