That vill be a good question for the upcoming holiday sales.

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by Anne Shaw

It seems like a never ending story. First we had some hundreds of iPod killers launched by different MP3 players makers. Now the mobile phone producers are embracing the same trend with, of course, the iPhone killers.

Maybe they should all team up and start a "Let's Kill iPhone" campaign or something. Anyway lately Apple had its share of problems with angry clients over the iPhone price cut and with the whole unlocking story so the rivals companies could not miss the occasion and are taking advantage of the opportunity.

Right in time for the holiday season Verizon Wireless has unveiled on Wednesday a new smart mobile phone that resembles the iPhone in several ways.

Created by LG Electronics, the LG Voyager (aka LG VX10000 Voyager), as the new model is called, will be offered exclusively by Verizon Wireless.

With its large external touch screen 400x240 touch screen, which also slides open sideways for a full QWERTY keypad, LG Voyager features also 3G data network technology, which is an advantage that the Voyager has over the iPhone.

Just for the moment, I might say, because last month when iPhone was introduced in UK, Steve Jobs said that starting next year, Apple may offer a 3 G iPhone.

But until then let's go back to LG Voyager. The standard version includes a 2 Mp camera and a music player with jacks for headphones, Bluetooth headsets, and stereo speakers. The LG Voyager supports MP3, Windows Media Audio, and AAC files and its memory is expandable to 8 GB via microSD.

Verizon has done its home work and the LG Voyager offers also full HTML browsing, VCAST support.

For those customers who love to read e-mails and chat the LG Voyager includes a new mobile e-mail service managed by Verizon and mobile a IM client

However, Verizon Wireless hasn't disclosed when the Voyager will hit the market, although the new smart phones are expected to be on the stores' shelves already before Thanksgiving.

Beside the LG Voyager Verizon Wireless has also introduced Samsung Juke, the LG Venus and BlackBerry Pearl.

The LG Venus has two dual front screens, the lower of which also has touch input with vibration feedback, which make accessing the phone's features a breeze. Similar to the LG Voyager, LG Venus also offers a microSD memory port that accommodates up to 8 GB of expandable memory, a music player that supports .mp3, .wma and unprotected .aac files and a 2.0 megapixel camera and camcorder.

Samsung Juke is a nice device and quite innovative, I might add. The trick is that Juke has a swivel design which enables it to literally flick open 180 degrees to reveal the keypad. It includes alsoa VGA camera with Nightshot, Bluetooth stereo support for listening to music and the ability to access Verizon Wireless' popular services such as VZ Navigator and Chaperone.