At the CTIA trade show all kinds of new, sleek smartphones that aim to imitate the iPhone were unveiled. So far, none looks like an iPhone killer, according to TGDaily on Thursday.

The Apple iPhone was unveiled in January, 2007. So far, however, the iPhone remains the benchmark, and the other manufacturers appear to still be catching up.

"It feels like the iPod all over again..." Wrote Christian Zibreg. "The iPhone hardly can be considered a new product and has many flaws, but Apple got a lot of things right simply by looking at the market, talking to people, correcting mistakes others have made for years and coming up with a fantastic design that was years ahead of its competition."

Perhaps only four phones have a shot at the iPhone. The RIM BlackBerry 9000, Samsung’s Instinct and Sony Ericsson’s Xperia. "There is a wildcard in this game, which has the potential to make a strong debut -- Garmin’s Nuvifone," Mr. Zibreg noted.

Even so, all these phones lack something the iPhone has, the Apple patented technologies: the multi-finger gestures, the accelerometer and the proximity sensor. "However, they do set the bar higher in terms of plain hardware specs," Mr. Zibreg added. "It is very obvious that aim to beat the iPhone at its own game and to improve the device’s weaknesses and offer features such as 3G support, GPS, video recording, higher resolution screens, memory card slots, user-replaceable batteries, haptic feedback and physical, slide-out QWERTY keypads (Xperia)."

Despite flash announcements and some features the iPhone doesn’t now have, history suggests that Apple won’t be standing still with the 3G iPhone. One such jump could be a redesign of the case, a video camera, a GPS of its own, and a slimmer profile.

"It has been 14 months since the iPhone has been unveiled, but this year’s CTIA shows that traditional cellphone makers are still behind Apple in designing a ’cool’ smartphone," Mr. Zebrig concluded. "And while the new generation of phones [are] catching up, the next-gen iPhone could reestablish or even extend the lead. As long as Apple is skating to where the puck is going to be, and not where it has been, handset makers are going to have a tough time knocking-down the iPhone."

As a result, iPO notes, many of the cool new mobile phones announced at CTIA are going to get Zuned.