iPhone versus your phone: Avoiding iPhone envy

Yes, the iPhone is sleek and sexy, and it has a slick interface that performs so many techno-tricks, even confirmed Luddites are salivating. But there's no reason to junk your current handset -- in fact, your Phone is more than ready to meet the iPhone challenge head on.

You already can get many of the features that Apple's cell phone offers -- music, photos, and visual voice mail -- in similar form for the vast array of mobile phones on the market today. Moreover, some of the downloadable applets that can run on assorted cell phones are slicker and cooler and go beyond what the iPhone ostensibly does.

Here's a sampling of some of the best ways to dress up your current cell phone and avoid iPhone envy. While some of our favorite phone enhancements are free, others come with a nominal price tag of $30 or less -- even if you load up on a bunch of them, you still won't get anywhere near the $500 to $600 that Apple's thingamajig will set you back. And most of these apps will work with the gamut of mobile models, from all the major carriers -- namely AT&T (formerly Cingular), Sprint/Nextel, T-Mobile, and Verizon -- especially if they are Web-enabled.

iPhone: Visual Voicemail lets you see a listing of voice-mail messages and choose which ones to listen to.

Your Phone: Sign up with CallWave, a free service that sends copies of your messages to your e-mail. You see the callers and the message lengths in the subject line so you can select which to listen to, and you reply by text or a call back. It automatically creates a PC-based contact list and notifies you of new messages through an SMS text note sent to your phone.

Alternatively, you can try the Web-based GotVoice, which grabs your new voice-mail messages, records them as MP3 files, and sends them to your chosen e-mail address. The messages are preserved on your phone's voice-mail service as well as in your GotVoice inbox. One-upping iPhone's Visual Voicemail, GotVoice works with multiple phones (say, your mobile, home, and work numbers), letting you see all of your voice mail wherever you access your e-mail. While the standard service is free, it is not free from advertising unless you pay $10 for a premium account.

iPhone: Syncs music with your PC and the iTunes Store automatically.

Your Phone: Having already released a bevy of music-playing cell phones, other phone vendors are enjoying a head start on Apple and can offer music features that the iPhone can only hope to have. For example, NormSoft's PocketTunes, a $38 application for all Palm Treo phones, not only handles music downloads from Yahoo Music Engine, Napster To Go, and Rhapsody To Go (among other subscription services) but also enables Internet radio reception and can be pimped up with dozens of downloadable skins.

If you have a Windows Mobile-based smart phone from any mobile carrier, Mercora's M music player can give you remote access to songs stored on your PC and let you tune in to Internet radio broadcasts; all you do is download a small app to your phone and PC. The service costs $5 per month or $50 per year.