Watch Your Back Apple, These 10 iPhone Killers Are On The Prowl

It's been a week since the Apple iPhone 3G launched in earnest, to throngs of Mac-faithful Appleheads looking to get their hands on the second-generation of the device. It took just a weekend for Apple to sell one million 3G iPhones, so says Apple.

But as the lines at the Apple Store vanish, the dust starts to clear and iPhone-mania wanes, smart phone makers are lining up to try and take a bite out of Apple iPhone's success. Some take elements from the iPhone and put a new spin on them " though they're not necessarily iPhone clones. Others take mobile computing in a different direction. Regardless, there is a crop of device makers lurking around the corner, peeler in hand, hoping to skin the iPhone, or at least give Apple a flesh wound.

Here we take a look at 10 iPhone killers, devices that have the potential to cut the core right out of Apple. Anyone else smell apple pie?

The BlackBerry Bold 9000, though still months away, is already getting rave reviews from the likes of the Boy Genius Report. While not a touch-screen smart phone -- BlackBerry addicts will have to wait for the BlackBerry Thunder for that -- the Research in Motion (RIM) Ltd.'s BlackBerry Bold takes the iPhone to task because it its strong focus on business users. Like the new iPhone, the BlackBerry Bold 9000 offers 3G, GPS and Wi-Fi connectivity. While iPhone's browser may be a bit better, the Bold's full QWERTY keyboard, sound quality and call quality make it a smart phone lover's dream.

Add to that the 480 x 320 resolution screen, which Boy Genius said is "the screen to beat," with its vibrant color, and the iPhone might want to start looking over its shoulder.

"This is the device every single BlackBerry user has been waiting for," the Boy Genius Report review said. "Finally a BlackBerry that has it all. 3G, GPS, Wi-Fi, QWERTY keyboard, camera, great screen, clean styling and more."

Plus, if you have a BlackBerry and are jonesing for an iPhone, there are a host of applications to give your BlackBerry an iPhone makeover.

To many, Palm was a sitting duck, just biding time until the Apples and BlackBerrys of the world took away its dwindling market share. But this week, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based device maker set out to prove it ain't dead yet. Palm and Sprint released the Palm Treo 800w, an updated version of Palm's signature smart phone, with a leaner, meaner form factor.

Releasing the new Treo just days after iPhone fever gripped the nation was a bold move for Palm, but the handset maker is hoping to back it up with the Treo 800w, which runs Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional as an operating system and features GPS, Wi-Fi and EVDO Rev. A.

The Treo, which features a 320 x 320 resolution touch screen and a full QWERTY keyboard, measures 4.4 x 2.3 x 0.7 inches and weighs in at 5 ounces, making it slimmer and more streamlined than earlier Treo iterations. The Treo 800w also features a 2.0-megapixel camera with camcorder, built-in media player and stereo Bluetooth. It also features a MicroSD card slot for up to 8 GB of memory.

Right now, the device is only available through Sprint. It runs just under $250 after a two-year contract, instant savings and a mail-in rebate.

Yeah, Apple's 3G iPhone sold more than one million devices in three days and it took the Palm Centro a little more than six months, but between the Centro's success and the recent Treo 800w release, Palm may be poised for a comeback.

The Centro (pictured) is Palm's little smart phone that could; a device geared at the first-time smart phone buyer rolled out to the market at an attractive price point: Less than $100 from Sprint and Verizon Wireless with a contract and $69.99 from ATandT for a limited time. Palm also offers an unlocked Palm Centro for just under $300, which will work on any carrier's GSM network.

The Centro is Palm's true iPhone rival, a touch screen handset that builds on the popularity of the Treo and offers a 320 x 320 transflective 16-bit color touch screen; 64 MB of user storage and a 1.3 megapixel camera with two-times zoom and video capabilities.

The Centro also offers various email platforms, instant messaging services, push-to-talk capabilities and a host of other multimedia capabilities depending on which carrier you chose.

Shown here is ATandT's Centro in glacier white.

Samsung is going all out with its attempts at iPhone-icide. At this year's CTIA Wireless show, Sprint unveiled the Samsung Instinct, a touch-screen device that had even Apple's faithful questioning their iPhone devotion. The Instinct garnered so much interest, in fact, that Sprint announced a Samsung Instinct shortage shortly after the devices became available to the public.

The Samsung Instinct delivers iPhone-like functions like Visual Voicemail, which lets users listen to messages in whatever order they choose and manage messages with a screen tap. The handheld measures 2.17 inches x 4.57 inches x 0.49 inches and weighs in at 4.5 ounces. It also offers support for corporate and consumer POP3 email, features a host of multimedia capabilities and lets users play music while surfing the Web, texting or playing games. The instinct also boasts a 2.0 megapixel camera with camcorder, expandable microSD memory of 8 GB, Bluetooth, an integrated world clock, SMS voice and text messaging, picture caller ID and Sprint Mobile Sync.

If the Instinct wasn't enough evidence to show that Samsung is truly gunning for Apple, the Samsung Omnia takes the competition to a new level. Samsung strategically announced the Omnia days before it had planned to, which was coincidentally the same day Steve Jobs unveiled the Apple iPhone 3G. The sneak attack paid off, generating buzz for the Omnia, aka the SGH-i900. Even the name, Omnia, which is Latin for "everything," is a jab at the competition.

The Omnia will run Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional and offer applications like Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. For a Web browser, Omnia uses Opera 9.5. The Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth enabled Omnia has a 3.2-inch display, which, like the iPhone, takes up the majority of the device's face, aside from a few navigation buttons. The 240 x 400 resolution QVGA widescreen display is lower resolution than the iPhone, but the touch-screen uses tap, sweep, drag and drop motions similar to the iPhone's. The Omnia's screen can also open to a full QWERTY keyboard.

The quad-band Omnia operates at 850, 900, 1800 and 1900 MHz. It will run on both WCDMA and DSM. It supports 7.2 Mbps per second HSDPA, or 3G, and EDGE data networking. It also supports a host of multimedia video standards, features a music player that can hold about 4,000 songs and a 5 megapixel auto-focus camera.

The Nokia E90 Communicator, a 3G clamshell device that offers two screens (one when it's open and one when it's closed), is what Nokia is calling "a laptop in your pocket".

The device uses HSDPA for Internet and file transfers; integrated GPS and features a 3.2 megapixel camera with flash and auto-focus. The quad-band handheld weighs 7.4 ounces and measures 5.2 x 2.24 x 0.79 inches. It supports POP3, IMAP4 and SMTP messaging and lets users view, open and edit email attachments with Quickoffice, ZIP Manager and Adobe Acrobat Reader. It also features instant messaging, text-to-speech, MMS and SMS capabilities along with several video and music features and functions.

Last month, Nokia added two new smart phones to its enterprise device line up. While neither were a specific jab at Apple's iPhone, the world's largest and most successful device manufacturer is sure to ruffle some feathers with these new devices, expected in the third quarter.

First up is the E71 (pictured). The handheld features a full QWERTY keyboard in a stainless steel case that comes in grey or white, depending on your preference. The 2.36-inch color display, coupled with the keyboard, make the E71 a one-handed or two-handed device, again, depending on preference.

What makes the E71 a true business device is its e-mail support, offering up Microsoft Exchange, among others. It also features a built-in mobile VPN and data encryption for both the handheld's memory and memory cards. The smart phone runs the Nokia S60 Symbian OS and offers up 110 MB of internal memory and support for up to 8 GB of external memory. Talk time can reach 10.5 hours on a GSM network and 4.5 hours on WCDMA.

And to prove that it's not all business and it can play, just like the iPhone, the Nokia E71 features a 3.2 megapixel camera with auto-focus and flash, along with a music player.

While the E71 is mostly business, with some play included, its counterpart, the Nokia E66 puts business in a package designed for fun and style. The Apple iPhone's touch screen is cool, but when was the last time someone broke out a slider phone in a business meeting? You could be first.

The E66 (pictured) is a slide-to-open smart phone with stainless steel accents. Like the E71, it comes in grey or white steel. Also like the E71, the E66 supports email applications like Microsoft Exchange and Web applications like Google Gmail, Yahoo Mail and MSN Hotmail.

The Nokia E66 also runs on the Nokia S60 Symbian OS and offers 110 MB of internal memory and can support an 8 GB memory card. It offers up to 7.5 hours of talk time on GSM and 3.5 on WCDMA.

Both the E71 and E66 offer enhanced calendars, contacts and customizable home screen modes, but the E66 one-ups the iPhone with an "orientation sensor" that automatically optimizes itself for full screen viewing or silences the ringer when the device is turned over.

Though it hit the streets a few months before the iPhone 3G, the HTC Touch Diamond was billed an early front-runner to unseat the iPhone for touch-screen dominance, though the Touch Diamond was not HTC's first venture into the land of touch-screen. It was also an early bird when it comes to touch screens with 3G, beating the iPhone to the next-generation network by about two months.

The HTC Touch Diamond is also a little smaller than its chief rival. The mobile device works on WCDMA networks and features a Qualcomm chipset that enables it to hit mobile internet data rates of up to 7.3 Mbps using HSDPA and HSUPA. It features a 2.8-inch 640 x 480 VGA touch screen with 3D imaging thanks to a revamped version of HTC's TouchFLO software. The Touch Diamond also offer access to photos, music, messages, push email and other features and runs on Microsoft's Windows Mobile 6.1 operating system and uses an Opera browser that lets uses zoom and pan into Web sites, with Web view rotation, similar to iPhone's.

Additional features include video-calling, a 3.2 megapixel camera, Wi-Fi connectivity, Bluetooth capabilities, GPS and 4 GB of internal memory, 256 MB of flash and 192 MB of RAM. The Touch Diamond can accommodate up to four hours of talk time and up to 300 hours of standby time, or 100 hours of standby when push email is activated.

On July 4, Taiwan-based device manufacturer OpenMoko began selling its Linux-based touch-screen device, the Neo FreeRunner, an open source rival to the Apple iPhone. While the release date was a bit of a marketing ploy -- celebrating an open source device on Independence Day -- the Neo FreeRunner delivered a GNU/Linux handset with integrated core software for dialing, SMS and recording contacts. Additional features will be added overtime through periodic downloads and a software suite that will debut at LinuxWorld next month.

OpenMoko's Neo FreeRunner will be available in two versions, an 850 MHz model or a 900 MHz tri-band GSM model to match the wireless frequencies in different countries.

The black, oval-shaped handset weighs in at 6.5 ounces and features a 2.8-inch 480 by 640 resolution VGA touch-screen, Wi-Fi connectivity through 802.11 b/g, AGPS, GPRS 2.5G, Bluetooth 2.0 support, two three-axis motion sensors and 128 MB of WSDRAM and 256 MB of NAND Flash memory.