3:15 PM -- It took us a while, but eventually we squeezed all our Mobile World Congress booth photo tour pics out of our camera, and gave each participant a highly subjective grade.

But who came Top of the Class of 2010? Seven vendors took part this year -- Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU), Ericsson AB (Nasdaq: ERIC), Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. , Motorola Inc. (NYSE: MOT), NEC Corp. (Tokyo: 6701), Nokia Networks , and ZTE Corp. (Shenzhen: 000063; Hong Kong: 0763). They gave us a variety of viewpoints, though much of it (understandably) was centered around Long Term Evolution (LTE).

• MWC 2010 Photos: AlcaLu Booth Tour
• MWC 2010 Photos: Ericsson Booth Tour
• MWC 2010 Photos: Huawei Booth Tour
• MWC 2010 Photos: Motorola Booth Tour
• MWC 2010 Photos: NEC Booth Tour
• MWC 2010 Photos: Nokia Siemens Booth Tour
• MWC 2010 Photos: ZTE Booth Tour

The grades we handed out were based on the vendors' overall efforts, including presentation, relevance, communications skills, and the ability to hold our attention (though only for 10 minutes, so surely not that difficult...).

So who came out on top? As the table below shows, it's hats off to NEC, which tied Nokia Siemens Networks for first. Both managed a B++ grade, but this was NEC's inaugural effort, while NSN had a year's experience to fall back on in its preparations, so extra kudos to NEC.

Table 1: MWC 2010 Booth Photo Tour Grades

Ranking	Vendor	MWC 2010 Photo Booth Tour Grade
1	NEC	B++
1	NSN	B++
3	Alcatel-Lucent	B+
3	Ericsson	B+
3	Huawei	B+
3	Motorola	B+
7	ZTE	B-
Source: Our fevered imaginations

The vendors tied for third place are listed in alphabetical order, as there was little, if nothing to differentiate them. ZTE must surely do better next year.

— Ray Le Maistre, International Managing Editor, Light Reading