EE and Huawei among winners at Mobile Industry Awards

They also took the prize for Campaign of the Year for their 5G launch, while there were also awards for O2, Vodafone, Sky Mobile and BT.

Huawei were named as Smartphone Manufacturer of the Year, with the Motorola Razr taking the crown for Hottest New Phone and the iPhone 11 was named as the Phone of the Year.

Usually held with a ceremony, the Mobile Industry Awards 2020 ran online with winners announced between 21 September and 25 September 2020.

EE scoop awards

The EE mobile network took three awards during the week: Innovation of the Year, Best Network for Data and Campaign of the Year.

In the Innovation of the Year category, EE's nomination was for the introduction of their Smart Plans in 2019 which allow customers to swap different benefits during the life of their contracts.

Judges said the ability to think differently to their competitors and provide customers with unique features like Swappable Benefits and their Service Pack marked them out as innovative.

The award for Best Network for Data was sealed by EE's being the first to bring 5G to market, and becoming the early leader in the technology.

Similarly, EE's 5G launch won Campaign of the Year for their ability to make their 5G offering easy for customers to understand while capturing their interest.

For more on EE see our EE mobile network guide.

Other network winners

O2 won two notable awards: Best Online Retailer and Best Network for Business. With their joint venture with Virgin Media set to move forward in 2021, it will be interesting to see how their performance changes or improves.

Vodafone won awards for Best High Street Retailer and Best Network for Loyalty & Retention. This latter award was based on Vodafone demonstrating average customer commitments of more than ten years, plus the use of schemes like VeryMe and Feel Good Fridays to improve customer satisfaction.

BT Wholesale were handed the award for Best MVNO Partner as one of the leading providers of MVNO services, while Sky Mobile took the prize for Best MVNO - Virgin Mobile were Highly Commended in that category.

Device awards

Huawei battled other nominees Fairphone, Google Pixel, Motorola and Samsung to take the award for Smartphone Manufacturer of the Year.

The company's troubles, stemming from US sanctions first implemented in May 2019 and extended in May 2020, surprisingly contributed to the winning of the award - judges said their ability to innovate and achieve commercial success in the UK smartphone market even under the restrictions made their victory more impressive.

Read our full guide on the security and usability of Huawei smartphones.

Awards were handed out to Motorola and Apple for specific devices - Motorola for their Razr flip phone and Apple for the iPhone 11.

The Motorola Razr was named as the Hottest New Phone of 2020. Judges said that, despite it not being the best phone of the year, it was revolutionary in the fledgling world of foldable phones.

Finally, the other notable award went to Apple for 2020 Phone of the Year. Judges highlighted Apple's commitment to offering more affordable products alongside easy to use software in iOS.

They concluded by saying that customers looking to buy a new iPhone in 2019 or 2020 found one of the best choices in the Apple iPhone 11.