Smartphone ads 2010: Clunkers and blockbusters

With all the millions of dollars that manufacturers and mobile operators pour into advertising their flagship smartphones, you'd think more commercials would be hits. But we all know better than that. For every poignant or entertaining ad there are five more duds that fail to entertain, or elicit any sort of emotional response.

Take 2010, for instance. There have been few memorable campaigns, not all of them good, and many more that amounted to expensive TV noise. It casts a shadow on Apple's advertisers that one of the year's best commercials was an Internet-viral Jane Lynch parody of the iPhone 4.

So without further ado, we pass judgment on ads for eight seminal cell phones in the past year in our modified version of the Clio awards. Let the wild smartphone ad rumpus begin.