E-mail, Web surfing and photo-sharing, these smart phones can do it all

They are part cell phone, part laptop, and they're becoming indispensable to more and more members of the workforce.

Today's smartphones — devices that combine a phone with the schedule-keeping, contact-management and Internet capabilities of a personal digital assistant — make it easy for business travelers to leave their laptops behind, and for the rest of us to torture each other with text messages.

Some of the newest smartphones combine good looks with useful business features, thus making them good gift-giving candidates.