With the holiday season nearly upon us, many people will be buying iPhones as gifts. The question is, which one to buy?

If the recipient is a tech geek or money is no object, go with the $199 and up iPhone 5. It's an amazing device and it will likely receive software updates from Apple during the length of a two year carrier contract.

If the recipient doesn't care too much about tech, or money is an issue, go with the $99 iPhone 4S. The phone is still great. All features of iOS 6 are available. If history is any guide, it will get most software feature updates during the life of the contract. Some cutting edge software features are likely to be unsupported, but for most things, the phone should be great.

DO NOT BUY THE FREE iPHONE 4

Unless the $99 it would take to upgrade to the iPhone 4S will take food off your table or prevent you from making a rent or mortgage payment, avoid the iPhone 4. It's an okay phone at the moment, but it already doesn't support many of the features of iOS 6. Panorama photo mode, Siri, and Turn by Turn directions are but a few. It will only get worse when iOS 7 hits next year. It's also noticeably slower than the 5 and 4S.

Given how much money you'll end up spending on a service contract with any smartphone, you'll make a mistake buying a phone that's already two years old at purchase. With the pace of technology, you'll have a 4 year old phone by the end of your contract.

That's an eternity.