To end the brilliant year that was 2011, we held the Nokia Community Awards, where you were able to vote for your favourite things that happened over the last 12 months.

Q1. Most exciting Nokia phone of 2011

As voted by you, the most exciting Nokia phone of last year is the Nokia N9. Announced in June 2011, it’s not so much of a wonder that it beat its main rival, the Lumia 800, which was announced at Nokia World in October. Running Meego, the swipe interface supported by no homescreen button excited and intrigued tech enthusiasts everywhere with its new and unique approach. Love it or hate it, it’s certainly a beautiful phone that has helped set the stage for Nokia’s newest series of flagship polycarbonate unibody mobiles.

Q2. Best new application for Nokia devices

With so many new applications to choose from and each available on different platforms and devices, it was a difficult category to construct. However overall, the winner of this is ultimately WhatsApp. Brought to many Symbian phones everywhere in 2011, WhatsApp made it that little bit easier to keep in instant contact with all of your friends and family, anywhere, without eating into your network charges, as long as you have that lovely unlimited data plan!

Q3. Best Nokia-produced video

Last year we saw some amazing videos from Nokia, like Nokia Gulp, the biggest stop motion animation frame in the world! And one of my personal favourites, Dragonfly Love (It’s just random, I love it!). As voted by you though, neither of these made it to top spot, this is forever reserved for the series of N9 Seconds videos produced to promote the Nokia N9. This makes sense considering the verdict for Q1, don’t you think?

Q4. Best user-generated Nokia-related video

Personally this is one of my favourite categories. This is where we look beyond the tech and into the heart, where we see not just selfishly what a piece of electronics can do for us – to speed up our day and keep us organised – but to paint a picture of passion and inspiration for us to reflect on, enjoy and share. The winner is also my favourite; Splitscreen: A Love Story by James W Griffiths.

 Q5. Best photo taken with a Nokia

Too many photographs to choose from but we managed to get it down to five. Victory for the N8 and Alan for this picture

Q6. Community Ambassador of the year

Now we come to the sharp end, where you told us who you thought was the most inspirational, passionate, helpful, dedicated and all around great guy or gal in the Nokia community last year. Remember, the winner of this will be heading over to Nokia House in Finland to receive their distinguished award and a lovely weekend of activities to boot. The winner, as voted by you (the Nokia community) is… Jay Montano!

I’m sure you’ll all join myself and the Nokia Connects team in congratulating Jay on a wonderful year and wish him a great time on his trip to Finland!

Finally…

Finally, we have our random winner to announce; everyone’s name who submitted to these awards was thrown into a magical lottery machine that we keep in a secret box inside our office. We only bring it out for special occasions like this, so after blowing off the dust and filling it full of names we turned it on. A few puffs of smoke, a bang and some strange noises later, we have a name to share: Syed Iftekhar Alam. Congratulations you are the winner of a Nokia Play 360 speaker! If you drop me an email we’ll arrange delivery of your prize.

This concludes our 2011 Community Awards, hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as we have. Please congratulate our winners or voice your opinions in the comments section / @Nokia_Connects. Before you ask, no, we cannot share a picture of our magical lottery machine. :)