Five... great iPhone racers

Ridge Racer Accelerated

Personally, my favourite iPhone racer is Ridge Racer Accelerated. It was pretty crappy when Namco first released it (I had an iPhone 3G back then and the hardware just couldn't handle the game and the controls were terrible). Since then Namco have added much better control options and added retina support, making it great fun to play (assuming you have a 3GS or better with the grunt to run it).

sonic all stars...

On the ps3 sonice all stars racing is one of the most fun racing games since mario kart, in fact probably better once you get the hang of boosting and triple boosting etc. great tracks and once you get the hand of it you can boost and really fly around the track. plus the challenges are great fun. try getting all A+++! :)

I've tried some of those and wasn't hugely excited by any of them. Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit, on the other hand, I thought was fantastic fun.

Meanwhile on Android....err...nada.

Ground Effect

I found Lil'Racerz to be very buggy, unfortunately. It was fun and had lots of amusing touches (for example you can run over the spectators if you skid off the track and they'll try to run away from you).

I've really enjoyed Ground Effect by the guy who wrote Populous. It's a very chilled out racing game.

viability of the platform

I would love a decent racing or 1st person shooter on either my iOS device or my Android tablet, but there is a flaw.

By having controls that are on the screen;-

1) My fat fingers get in the way of what i am looking at

2) My excitement and distraction by the game play means my fingers slide off the controls leaving me wondering why i am dieing/crashing and no longer controlling.

Bring back the N-Gage or stick to the proper console for non-strategy/puzzle games.

Asphalt 6

I quite like Asphalt 6, nice graphics and some tricky challenges plus you can get add ons for your car too which is nice. It does tend to drain the battery quite quickly though as do most graphic intensive games.