So this it it. Apple Inc.'s (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone is a week away and the media frenzy hasn't subsided. Quite the opposite. I'm not sure what came first, the public interest in the iPhone or the media coverage, but it really doesn't matter now; people want iPhone news and the media is more than happy to provide.

The only thing that is certain at the moment is that Steve Jobs is a marketing genius! How so? Well, there are several phones already out there today that combine some of the main features of the iPhone, some of them even with (arguably) better features, like GPS. Just look at this list of the Top Ten iPhone Killers compiled back in February. Many of the phones listed there have already been released like the Nokia N95. Sarah Gilbert also reviewed a few other super/smart phones that may threaten the iPhone. And yet, no other phone received such attention.

How much media coverage is too much? Slate writer Jack Shafer ends his piece entitled Apple Suck-Up Watch by saying, "And somewhere out there in medialand a journalist will produce such a fawning piece of iPhone worship that the Church of Apple will anoint him a saint." Has the media gone too far? To be sure, some people had had enough and sites like engadget even offer feeds that exclude iPhone and/or Apple coverage.

Question is, though, what to do with your Apple stock, or, if you don't have any, what action to take?

I like to call them "superphones" but the industry phrase is "smart phones," and the best of the bunch still exist in our collective imagination and in sparkling light-on-black press photos on the internet: the Apple iPhone (due out June 29), the LG Prada ("late summer") and the Foleo, a companion to the Palm Treo (more "late summer").

While many of the details are known, of course, I haven't actually touched any of these superphones. But that's part of the deliciousness. I can already tell you which one I want to have in my big purple knitted bag immediately (the iPhone) and which I'm fine admiring from afar, and on the cover of US Magazine (LG Prada) and which I might only buy if I was far more idle and in possession of way more disposable income than I now have (Palm Foleo).

Face it: the LG Prada phone is not about utility. The Prada phone is all cool. That said, it seems to have lots of the same great features of the iPhone: the nice high-res camera, the touch screen, the pretty sleek shape. It does e-mail and IM and music and internet, all with space-agey sounds.

But how does it rate?

What is it? The LG Prada is a mobile phone that you can also use as a prop for photo shoots when you and your 105-pound friends are putting together your runway portfolios (score two cool points). And, as a bonus, you can take photos for said portfolios, and then set them as your wallpaper with the cool click of your French-manicured finger. Like the iPhone, it plays music and movies (score two cool points), it takes photos (score one each on usefulness and coolness), it has a touch interface (another point each for usefulness and coolness).

How much? It's certain that the LG Prada will be offered over the Verizon (NYSE: VZ) network, although it's not certain how much it will be in the U.S. In Europe, the phone is selling for (about) the equivalent of $800, so we'll go with that: $800.