Friday’s release of the “3G” version of Apple’s iPhone ($200) was a sensation, drawing a wave of eager customers that, despite lessons learned last year, actually dragged the activation procees to a halt for some folks. Still, the speedier, more fully featured phone arrived not a moment too soon, as other cell-phone manufacturers are desperate to ride Apple’s design coattails. This is nothing new, of course: Months before the first generation was released, there was already enough imitation going on for Apple to take legal action. Some trend followers beat the original iPhone onto the market while others appeared to vanish before they got beyond the design phase; still others were clumsy enough to get tech journalists snickering, and have stayed in China to date. Today, the big hit in the non-iPhone iPhone arena appears to be Samsung’s Instinct (which starts at around $500, but with “instant savings” and rebates, the price drops to $130) comfortable , a familiar-looking little candybar that leapfrogs the new iPhone’s GPS capabilities by boasting actual turn-by-turn directions. (The iPhone will simply find your location on a map; the rest is up to you.) Then there’s LG’s Voyager, around $200, which combines touchscreen input with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. Nokia’s N800 ($300 online, but they’re out of stock on their website and at Amazon.com) takes a different design road, grafting its wide-format screen onto a case resembling a vintage electric shaver. None of these are cheap, and prices vary widely because of discounts and rebates, but the new HTC Touch Diamond (which the FCC just approved but is not yet on the U.S. market) and Samsung’s i900 (pictured), which also hasn’t hit the market yet, thoroughly compared here, buck trends by having a base cost, expected to be around $600, which is far higher than the iPhone’s slashed price. At least with those two, you wouldn’t be committed to using AT&T, as you are with Apple’s product. And what of that smartphone titan, the Blackberry? While their upcoming “Thunder 9500,” which will be tied to Verizon and is expected to hit store shelves in September, may eventually rock users’ worlds, gossip on the Internet (some of which is chronicled here) suggests it’s far from ready for prime time. However, if you want a sneak peek at it, tech blogger Boy Genius claims to have found the first picture of one and boasts about it on his blog.