The latest batch of touch-enabled devices is a marked improvement over what was available less than a year ago.

Sometimes a few months makes all the difference. Last year around this time, handset vendors were just beginning to flood the market with iPhone-wannabe devices. Most had touch screens. But the screens were often stubborn and unresponsive, or the handsets themselves were saddled with poorly laid out icons.

Fortunately, that's all changed for the better. Now you can choose from dozens of touch screen handsets, none of which require a stylus or careful aim to use. Plus, many of today's touch screen handsets have higher screen resolutions, which allows for sharp user interface graphics and clearly designed icons and buttons.

That said, not all touch screens are created equal. There are two basic kinds: resistive and capacitive. Capacitive screens sense the proximity of your finger using an electrical field. They're more accurate with finger touches, although you can't use a stylus (which is usually not a problem). The iPhone, Palm Pre, and T-Mobile myTouch 3G all have capacitive LCDs. Resistive screens are an older design; they're composed of multiple metallic layers that conduct electricity when pressed together. They work fine, but you need to be a little slower and more deliberate with them in practice.

Both resistive and capacitive screens can support multi-touch. Multi-touch expands the UI; for example, you can zoom in and out of Web pages and photos with two fingers, or cycle through photos by swiping with your index finger. Only a few handsets (like the iPhone and Palm Pre) actually employ multi-touch, though their number is increasing.

Here's a roundup of the latest batch of handsets with full touch screens. All of the following devices are new designs, having been released sometime over the past several months.

AT&T





$199.99, 16GB (with two-year contract)

$299.99, 32GB (with two-year contract)

Of course there's going to be an iPhone on this list; at this point it would be akin to treason to leave it out. The iPhone 3GS kicks it up a notch this year with a significantly faster processor, a better camera, a stellar VGA video recorder, and a fingerprint-resistant coating. It's the best smartphone in the U.S.

Apple iPhone 3G (AT&T)



$99.99 (with two-year contract)

It may be last year's model. But at a new price point of just $99 with a two-year contract, why not snag an iPhone on the cheap? You still get 3G and GPS radios, and you can still run all 60,000 applications in the App Store with the second-generation iPhone 3G. (It'll be a long while before we see many 3GS-only apps.)

Cricket Wireless





$299.99

Cricket's only touch-screen phone has an attractive oval shape and a widget-based interface, which shows YouTube and MySpace details on its home screen. It also syncs contacts with Google, a very neat trick. But Cricket charges extra for Web browsing on this phone, and the browser isn't all it's cracked up to be.

MetroPCS





$349.99

The Samsung Finesse is the only MetroPCS handset with a touch screen. As such, it offers a powerful camera and plenty of music and video options, although its e-mail program is a total disaster (stick with Web mail and you'll be OK). Plus, you can get unlimited calls and data with the Finesse for just $50 per month. That's a real steal, once you get past the high upfront price.

Sprint





$199.99 (with two-year contract)

After a successful launch in early June, the stellar Palm Pre has fallen out of the headlinesmostly because Palm took so long to release the to third-party developers. While we wait for the upcoming flood of webOS apps, the Palm Pre is still a killer device out of the box due to its capacitive touch screen and thoroughly modern, multitasking operating system. The Pre is little soft on phone reception, though.

Samsung Instinct S30 (Sprint)



$99.99 (with two-year contract)

The Instinct S30 looks like a slender iPhone copy, and unfortunately isn't nearly as powerful. That said, the S30 comes packed with streamed video services, GPS navigation, and the ability to buy music tracks over the air from Sprint's Music Store. I'd still give the nod to the Palm Pre, which is a real smartphone with a higher-resolution screen and a much more capable operating system. But the Instinct S30 offers better battery life and a simpler design at a lower price.

T-Mobile





$149.99 (with two-year contract)

The Samsung Highlight makes an excellent entry-level handset for anyone enamored with touch screens. The Highlight offers a surprising number of features for the price, including decent music and instant messaging apps and a basic but functional Web browser.

T-Mobile myTouch 3G (T-Mobile)



$199.99 (with two-year contract)

The nation's second Google Android smartphone, the myTouch 3G is slimmer and more contemporary than the original , even if it lacks a hardware keyboard. The myTouch 3G offers a responsive touch screen. It also runs the latest Android 1.5 OS, which added plenty of features at its introduction a few months ago. The myTouch's 3.2-inch, 320-by-480-pixel screen matches the 3.1-inch Palm Pre and 3.5-inch iPhone 3GS panels in resolution, and sits just between them in size.

Verizon Wireless





$99.99 (with two-year contract)

Can't decide if you want a big keyboard or a touch screen? Get both with the enV Touch. In fact, this unusual clamshell phone offers two 3-inch screens. The outer one is touch-enabled; it's a little dull in color, but it's easy to use. The inner one is considerably more vibrant, and comes in handy for watching videos or for making use of the roomy QWERTY keyboard inside.

RIM BlackBerry Storm 9530 (Verizon Wireless)



$149.99 (with two-year contract)

The Storm is a pretty polarizing device, with its clickable touch screen and unconventional interface. But most of its bugs are now gone with the latest .148 update. It's also an e-mail powerhouse, and offers a high-resolution screen along with solid GPS and media players. There's a brewing on the horizon, but the Storm 9530 is still the only touch screen BlackBerry in existence.